Summer Romantic Movies Preview 2024

Sometime around 2010, cinematic romance ran out of steam. The romantic comedy genre in particular fell out of favor for years. But in 2024, romantic movies are back big-time.

The Sydney Sweeney–Glen Powell rom-com Anyone But You was a $220 million theatrical blockbuster last December, got rereleased with new footage on Valentine’s Day and then became Netflix’s No. 1 streaming hit this April. Hit Man, also starring Glen Powell, which grafts a fictional love story onto the amazing true tale of a professor who moonlighted as a fake assassin for the New Orleans police, has been a top-10 Netflix hit for weeks, and The Idea of You, with Anne Hathaway as a single mom who kindles a fling with the Harry Styles–like 24-year-old lead singer (Nicholas Galitzine) of her teenage daughter’s fave boy band, is a Prime Video smash, especially among AARP viewers.

All of the above are well worth catching, and our reawakened passion for smooch-intensive movies shows no sign of dying down. Here are some of the promising ones coming up to tug at your heartstrings and/or tickle your funny bone.

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Fly Me to the Moon (July 12 in theaters)

This fanciful rom-com about the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon was supposed to be an Apple TV+ streaming original, but over and over, test audiences were so over the moon in their enthusiasm that it became a theatrical release. Channing Tatum stars as a former military pilot who’s in charge of the moon shot. But the White House is nervous that it won’t go well, so a Manhattan ad executive (Scarlett Johansson) gets the job of filming a fake lunar landing, just in case. It’s a send-up of TV’s most-watched event, which also launched a famous conspiracy theory, with bright 1960s colors and pop culture details that may remind viewers of Barbie’s sense of fun. Costars include Woody Harrelson, 62, and Ray Romano, 66, but it’s the stars’ romantic chemistry that’s going to make this one blast off.

Find Me Falling (July 19 on Netflix)

An aging rock star whose comeback album flops (played by not-at-all-flopping singer-actor Harry Connick Jr., 56) takes a break from his fading career, relocating to a remote home on a cliff on the spectacular island of Cyprus. Suddenly, his old flame (Agni Scott, Bridget Jones’s Baby) shows up. Mamma mia! There they go again — how can he resist her? It’s the first Netflix flick shot in Cyprus, where Scott grew up, and Cypriot director Stelana Kliris calls it a love letter to the island: “I hope that it transports audiences and gives them a little bit of magical escapism.”