There’s a good chance when you think of rom-coms, Meg Ryan is the actress that springs to mind. The undisputed queen of the genre in the ’80s and ’90s, Ryan has largely stayed away from it in recent years. But for her sophomore directorial effort, What Happens Later, she’s decided to go back to what she knows best.
Directed, co-written, and starring Ryan, the film sees her paired up with David Duchovny as ex-lovers who get snowed in at an airport. Romantic and funny matters of the heart, and possibly something more, ensue.
Here’s the synopsis: Two ex-lovers, Bill (David Duchovny) and Willa (Meg Ryan), get snowed in at a regional airport overnight. Indefinitely delayed, Willa, a magical thinker, and Bill, a catastrophic one, find themselves just as attracted to and annoyed by one another as they did decades earlier. But as they unpack the riddle of their mutual past and compare their lives to the dreams they once shared, they begin to wonder if their reunion is mere coincidence or something more enchanted.
Ryan teamed up with Steven Dietz and Kirk Lynn on the screenplay, adapting Dietz’s stageplay Shooting Star. Eight years have passed since Ryan made her directorial debut with Ithaca, a small-town drama that she also had a role in.
What Happens Later opens in theaters on October 13th.
