'The Making Of': Lin-Manuel Miranda, Blake Lively, Richard Gere, And Diane Keaton To Star In Rom-Com

The Toronto International Film Festival is getting closer, and while the major awards circuit stop will look dramatically different this year — holding a mostly virtual edition amid the ongoing pandemic — there are still a few things you can always expect: star-studded projects going up for sale. One of the buzziest packages this year is a romantic-comedy called The Making Of, which will star Lin-Manuel MirandaBlake LivelyRichard Gere, and Diane Keaton.

Deadline broke the news that a buzzy new rom-com package will be going on sale at TIFF. Titled The Making Of, the rom-com is set to star Lin-Manuel Miranda, Blake Lively, Richard Gere, and Diane Keaton, and revolves around two couples — one a long-married filmmaker duo, the other two overemotional actors who portray the former in a story of how they first fell in love. Here is the logline per Deadline:

The romantic comedy revolves around two couples: long-married filmmakers (Gere and Keaton) have cast overemotional actors (Blake Lively and Lin-Manuel Miranda) to portray their younger selves in the story of their great love. Unfortunately, by the time shooting begins, their fabled marriage is unraveling. The filmmakers want to make a hit; the actors want to tell the true story. Whose version really is the truth? And how do they distinguish between real love and movie love when their lives and their work become hopelessly intertwined?

From the logline, it sounds like the kind of meta comedy about creators and the movie business that Hollywood loves, so I wouldn't be surprised if some major studio picked this up with the hopes of setting it up as their next sleeper hit. And we can't discount Netflix in the rom-com conversation, with the streamer almost singlehandedly reviving the genre with its string of good to middling romantic-comedies. Netflix loves nothing more than to pick up buzzy festival projects, which it promptly buries on its streaming service, so I expect it will attempt to make a bid for this project, perhaps to shift its appeal to older demographics rather than its current teen rom-com market.

Frequent collaborators Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (The Last Samurai, Love & Other Drugs) are writing and producing The Making Of. Deadline's story doesn't mention a director, but it is likely Zwick, based on the duo's past collaborations under their The Bedford Falls Company banner. Cameras begin rolling next year, hopefully after the worst of the pandemic has passed.