The pair who faked their way through a 2003 bet might be rolling the dice again. According to Variety, a sequel to How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days is in early development at Paramount, with both Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in talks to reprise their roles as columnist Andie Anderson and ad executive Benjamin Barry.
The original's premise was itself a delicious irony — two people each betting they could use the other to prove a point, one to show she could drive a man away in ten days, the other to show he could make a woman fall for him in the same span, only for it to turn real. This time around, a writer hasn't even been locked in yet, and the rest of the cast and key creative team have yet to be officially confirmed. What is confirmed is that Hudson will produce through her own company, Shiny Penny, alongside Pulp Fiction and Gattaca producer Stacey Sher. A director, plot details, and release date have not been announced.
The original was directed by Donald Petrie, with a cast that also included Kathryn Hahn, Adam Goldberg, and Thomas Lennon. Made on a roughly $50 million budget, it grossed nearly $180 million worldwide and is remembered as one of the defining rom-coms of its era.
This isn't the first time Hudson has revisited "the one that got away" — last year she revealed she'd actually been offered the lead in The Devil Wears Prada but turned it down due to scheduling conflicts, later admitting, "I should have figured out a way to make it work, but I didn't." Her recent work includes Song Sung Blue alongside Hugh Jackman, which earned her a second Oscar nomination, as well as the Netflix sports comedy series Running Point.
McConaughey's trajectory has gone the opposite direction. He deliberately stepped away from rom-coms in the late 2000s, and two years ago revealed he'd once considered walking away from acting entirely after growing disillusioned with the roles he was being offered. After a six-year break, he returned to the big screen with The Lost Bus and The Rivals Of Amziah King. As he told NME last year, "It has to be something special, or hit me the right way, for me to come back in front of the camera."
