The Austinites Behind What Happens Later, Meg Ryan’s Return to Rom-Coms

Meg Ryan and David Duchovny in What Happens Later (Courtesy of Bleecker Street)

There's no time like the fall to rewatch an old Meg Ryan movie about love. In perfect timing, after a multiple-year hiatus from acting, the beloved star will grace cinemas once again. Opening in theatres on Nov. 3, What Happens Later marks Ryan's great return to rom-coms as a lead actress, director, and co-writer.

Based on acclaimed playwright and former UT Theatre professor Steven Dietz's play Shooting Star, What Happens Later captures a chance encounter between former couple Willa (Ryan) and Bill (David Duchovny) as they're trapped in a snowed-in airport. Across 24 hours, the pair's opposing dispositions generate captivating and witty conversations as Willa, the dreamer, and Bill, the neurotic, reflect on the people they once were versus the people they've become.

The venture began in the spring of 2020 when Austin-based producers Jonathan Duffy and Kelly Williams were flipping through a stack of scripts written by Austin writers, hoping to find a project feasible for filming during a pandemic. They reached out to a previous collaborator of theirs, Kirk Lynn, co-founder of the Rude Mechs theatre company and Dietz's colleague in the UT Theatre Department, in search of a two-character story set in one location. From his recommendations, Shooting Star stood out to Duffy and Williams as particularly cinematic and universal in its messaging about relationships.

The play, which originally premiered in Austin at the Zach Theatre in 2009, came to be from a moment of reflection in Dietz's life. "I was thinking about people that were formative in my life," he explains. "I still hold certain people to the dreams they told me about, and I'm still rooting for them. But their life has moved on. Somehow that ended up in a reunion story of a couple who had each other's secrets because they once had each other's hearts." An airport setting stood out to Dietz as "the definition of a liminal space," leaving plenty of opportunity for romantic exploration as a waiting room between the status quo and adventure.

Once Dietz received word of the producers' interest, he immediately wanted to work on the adapted screenplay with his old pal Lynn. They both speak adoringly about their creative partnership in the summer and fall of 2020, when they sent drafts and rewrites of the screenplay back and forth on a loop. "We both wanted to impress each other," Lynn recalls. "It was just two friends who've known each other forever and suddenly get to write and flirt in this crazy way of saying, 'Hey, look what I did.'"

What Happens Later eventually fell into Ryan's hands during her search for a second movie to direct. Given her cherished oeuvre of wistful and banter-driven Nora Ephron films like When Harry Met Sally..., Sleepless in Seattle, and You've Got Mail, her agent, Duffy, and Williams all encouraged her to take the lead role. After Lynn and Dietz gave her their script, Ryan added her seasoned voice to the mix as a luster to the whole project.

Now three years since the idea's inception, both Dietz and Lynn will witness their writing come to life on a big screen for the first time in their careers. They hope that with them, audiences will experience excitement and tenderness as they reflect on lost connections and new beginnings.

What Happens Later from Bleecker Street opens in theatres Nov. 3 and will be available on VOD Nov. 28. Read our review on here.