Fans of Casey McQuiston's best-seller Red, White & Royal Blue have been hoping for a movie version of the queer romance novel since it was published in 2019, and it looks like their patience is about to pay off.
Tony Award-winning playwright Matthew Lopez has signed on to direct the film for Amazon Studios, making his feature directorial debut. He adapted the script from McQuiston's hit novel about Alex Claremont-Diaz, the biracial, bisexual First Son of the United States who falls in love with his longtime rival, Prince Henry, the grandson of the Queen of England.
The film will be produced by Greg Berlanti, director of 2018 film Love, Simon, and Sarah Schechter, with Lopez and Michael McGrath as executive producers. Lopez made history on Sunday as the first Latine playwright to win the Tony Award for best play, for The Inheritance.
The novel is a favorite among queer readers, who brought it back to the New York Times best-seller list at the height of lockdown this February. "I have seen more sales and more responses from readers and more everything in the past several months of the pandemic, than I did in the first year that the book was out," McQuiston said in an interview with The Advocate.
The story follows Alex, the Latinx son of President Ellen Claremont, whose ongoing feud with Prince Henry leads to a tabloid scandal and forces them to stage a truce for the press. Their fake friendship grows into a secret romance that could complicate his mother's re-election campaign.
McQuiston's queer adult and young adult rom-coms also include her latest novel One Last Stop, published this June, and her upcoming YA book I Kissed Shara Wheeler.
