The Love Hypothesis Finds Its Adam in Tom Bateman

Ali Hazelwood’s BookTok smash is no longer just a lab-coated daydream. On September 23, 2026, Prime Video releases The Love Hypothesis, the feature adaptation of the 2021 Berkley romance, with Tom Bateman as Dr. Adam Carlsen opposite Lili Reinhart’s Olive Smith. The timing is sharp. The novel spent 10 months on the New York Times bestseller list, and the film arrives as one of Prime Video’s highest-profile book-to-screen romances of the year.

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source: Berkley / Goodreads CDN

From Fanfiction to Fake Dating

Hazelwood first published the story online in 2018 as Head Over Feet, a Star Wars fan fiction built around the Reylo pairing of Rey and Kylo Ren. Berkley published the rewritten novel on September 14, 2021. The plot follows Stanford Ph.D. candidate Olive Smith, who impulsively kisses intimidating biology professor Adam Carlsen to convince her best friend Anh that she has moved on. The kiss becomes a fake relationship with rules, and both characters watch their theories about love collapse in real time.

That origin story now sits inside the movie in a way no casting director could have planned. Bateman is married to Daisy Ridley, who played Rey. He was cast as Adam, the character inspired by Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren. Deadline reported the casting on July 17, 2025. Bateman later told ScreenRant he learned the full fan-fiction connection after he was already offered the part.

The book even contains a private joke about him. In the novel, Dr. Tom Benton, Adam’s friend and a later antagonist, is named after Bateman. In the film, Arty Froushan plays that role.

How Bateman Built Dr. Evil

Claire Scanlon (Set It Up) directs from a screenplay by Sarah Rothschild. Elizabeth Cantillon produces. Reinhart and Hazelwood executive produce. Principal photography took place in Montreal in July and August 2025. The supporting cast includes Rachel Marsh as Anh, Jaboukie Young-White as Malcolm, Nicholas Duvernay as Jeremy, and Arty Froushan as Tom.

Bateman is a British actor previously seen in Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Da Vinci’s Demons, and Vanity Fair. In press for the film, he said he had not read Hazelwood’s novel before receiving the script, then quickly attached himself to Adam’s arc. At Prime Video’s Obsessed Fest in June 2026, he said the book stayed “around set all the time,” and that Reinhart handed him a copy in Montreal so they could read passages before shooting.

The official logline is clean: Olive kisses Adam to prove she has moved on, the lie becomes a mutually useful arrangement, and the experiment starts to look like the real thing. Amazon MGM Studios and MRC backed the project after Bisous Pictures announced development in October 2022.

source: Prime Video / Amazon MGM Studios (X CDN)

Watch the official trailer here: The Love Hypothesis - Official Trailer | Prime Video

Early reviews published on September 22 and 23, 2026, split on tone but agree on the pairing. Collider praised Reinhart’s comic timing and Bateman’s slow thaw. The Guardian was cooler, arguing the film lacks the book’s spark even as Reinhart carries several scenes. That split is the conversation worth having today. Did Bateman’s clipped, black-clad Adam land as the “Dr. Evil” readers pictured, or did the meta-casting overshadow the character?

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Sources

Deadline (July 17, 2025); Wikipedia entries for The Love Hypothesis and The Love Hypothesis (film); People and Us Weekly Obsessed Fest coverage (June–July 2026); Hollywood Reporter trailer and first-look reports; Parade and TV Insider background on Bateman; Prime Video official trailer (YouTube, August 26, 2026); published reviews from Collider, The Guardian, TheWrap, and Mashable (September 22–23, 2026).