‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’ Sequel Set Up at Paramount; Kate Hudson to Produce

‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’ Is Getting a Sequel — Kate Hudson’s Producing

Two decades after Andie Anderson seduced, sabotaged and somehow fell head over heels for Benjamin Barry, the internet’s favorite Y2K romance is getting another round. Paramount has set up a sequel to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, with original star Kate Hudson attached to produce — news that rom-com lovers have basically been manifesting for years.

What’s Actually Confirmed

Variety first broke the news, and the honest headline is that this is still very early days. Development is in its infancy — Variety’s report, citing a source close to the project, says the cast and several key creative roles are yet to be chosen, and the project is currently hunting for a screenwriter. But the stated intention is what matters here: the filmmakers and the studio want both Hudson and her original co-star, Matthew McConaughey, back in their signature roles. Casting, as ever, will depend on the eventual script, but the door is clearly being held wide open.

Hudson isn’t going it alone. Producing alongside her is Stacey Sher, the veteran behind a staggering filmography that includes “Pulp Fiction,” “Gattaca,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Vanilla Sky” and “Django Unchained,” who’s on board through her Shiny Penny banner. That’s a heavyweight pairing for a project that, even at this early stage, is drawing the kind of attention a beloved genre staple tends to command.

What Happened in the 2003 Original

If it’s been a minute, here’s the setup that made the movie a fixture of the genre. Andie Anderson is a magazine columnist writing a piece about modern dating, and her assignment is to make a man fall in love with her in ten days — then dump him, all in service of a story about how hard it is to lose a guy. Benjamin Barry is a confident advertising executive who bets his boss he can make any woman fall for him before a big campaign deadline. Their paths collide, one of Hollywood’s greatest premise collisions happens, and the result is a gloriously messy, largely dysfunctional relationship that begins as strategy and ends, inevitably, as real love.

Donald Petrie directed, and the supporting cast was a who’s-who of the era: Kathryn Hahn, Adam Goldberg, Thomas Lennon, Michael Michele and Shalom Harlow all rounded out the chaos. The film earned nearly $180 million worldwide on a reported $50 million budget and went on to be canonized as an essential rom-com — the sort of title that still pops up in your feed every Valentine’s Day and never gets old.

It’s All Part of the Y2K Nostalgia Wave

A follow-up here was never exactly shocking, because Hollywood is currently allergic to letting go of the late ’90s and early 2000s. This year alone has already delivered The Devil Wears Prada‘s smash sequel, a new Scary Movie, and another Toy Story, all of them monetizing the same warm glow of nostalgia. The lineup behind them isn’t slowing down either — Practical Magic 2 and “Focker-In-Law” are headed to theaters soon, while Shrek 5 and Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia” film are locked in for 2027.

The pattern is easy to spot: audiences keep showing up for familiar faces and familiar feelings, and studios keep obliging. In that context, a “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” sequel isn’t a gamble — it’s the safest possible bet in a market that just keeps paying out.

Kate Hudson Is on a Roll

The timing couldn’t be better for the star at the center of it. Running Point, her Netflix sports-comedy series, has kept her front and center with audiences, and her most recent big-screen turn in “Song Sung Blue” earned her a second Oscar nomination. Song Sung Blue follows her first nod, the career-making performance as Penny Lane in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, a role that essentially launched her into the rom-com stratosphere. She’s re-entering this world at the exact moment her profile is highest, which is probably not a coincidence.

And if Hudson’s back, the gravitational pull on McConaughey is obvious. The Oscar winner has called “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” an “anchor” in the rom-com canon, even as he spent the 2010s deliberately stepping away from the genre toward prestige dramas like “Mud,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Interstellar and “Dallas Buyers Club” — the last of which won him his Best Actor statue. He only recently broke a six-year big-screen hiatus. Getting the old band back together would be a genuine reunion of two performers whose chemistry basically defined an era of the genre.

Why This Matters

The interesting creative problem is that “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” is essentially a perfect, self-contained rom-com — a complete story with its own tidy ending. That’s precisely why a sequel is a harder sell artistically than, say, another installment in an ongoing franchise. There’s no obvious dangling plot thread to pick up, no cliffhanger to resolve. What a follow-up has to do instead is invent a compelling reason to reunite two people whose story already concluded, and hope the chemistry can carry the premise the way it did the first time. It’s a challenge, but it’s also the exact reason audiences are intrigued — if anyone can pull off the reunion, it’s the pair who made the formula work in the first place.

There’s also a reason a studio greenlights this kind of project and a reason audiences respond. Rom-coms were declared dead more times than anyone can count, yet the second a beloved one gets a sequel announcement, the internet lights up. It’s a reminder that comfort viewing isn’t a niche — it’s the backbone of a lot of people’s relationship with movies and TV. Whether Hudson and McConaughey actually reunite on screen depends on that screenwriter landing a take both sides love, but the fact that they’re even exploring it is more than enough to get fans talking.

So, the obvious question: do you actually want a “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” sequel, or is the original best left untouched? Sound off — because if the nostalgia machine has proven anything, it’s that these follow-ups keep coming no matter what we say. Early days or not, this one just became the rom-com story on everyone’s radar.