‘This Time Next Year’ Author Sophie Cousens Talks Adapting Book To Script For Roku Rom-Com With “Something A Little Bit More To Say”

deadline.com:

For This Time Next Year author Sophie Cousens’ first go at adapting one of her books into a film, the most challenging part was capturing the internal dialogue of her “spiky” protagonist” Minnie Cooper (Sophie Cookson).

The story, set over multiple New Year’s Eves and New Year’s Days, follows Minnie as she meets and confronts her nemesis from birth — Quinn Hamilton (Lucien Laviscount), who she believes stole the name she would have had if she were the first baby born on January 1, 1990 and not him. “There’s so much comedy in the book that comes from Minnie’s internal monologue, and I think that as a writer, that was one of the hardest things to show — what she’s thinking and her humor,” Cousens told Deadline in an interview following the film’s release on Roku. “When I wrote the book, I always imagined it as a film in my head.

It was really exciting was being able to bring some of the set pieces to life. A good rom com, you have the light and the shade, and you have the silly, fun stuff, and you have the romance, but there’s also something a little bit more to say.” When Minnie meets Quinn, she has just been left locked in a bathroom from the inside at his extravagant birthday party by her dud of a boyfriend Greg (Will Hislop).

One of Minnie’s major moves mid-movie is to break up with Greg, which she accomplishes. Her arc with Laviscount’s Quinn combines the popular romantic comedy tropes of fated mates and enemies to lovers — with Roku marketing the film as “a love-fate relationship.” “This is definitely enemies to lovers. [Minnie] completely takes against Quinn from the beginning because she completely reads him as a spoiled rich kid who’s had the world handed him on a platter.