This weekend, Regretting You, the second Colleen Hoover book-to-movie adaptation following last year’s tumultuous release of It Ends With Us, heads to theaters. Written by Susan McMartin and directed by The Fault in Our Stars’ Josh Boone, the film centers on two star-crossed couples—Morgan (Allison Williams) and Jonah (Dave Franco), as well as Morgan’s teen daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) and her classmate Miller (Mason Thames), who works at his local AMC Theater. His job isn’t integral to the movie’s soapy romance plot—yet the theater chain’s logo is splashed across multiple scenes.
There are plenty of other sponcon moments in Regretting You: lingering shots of Starry soda, a storyline lifted from the book involving Jolly Ranchers, and repeated scenes where Williams’s character watches Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. (RHOSLC star Heather Gay recently hosted a screening for the movie in her Utah hometown.) But AMC’s integration into the movie feels far more brazen. Some of the most pivotal points in Clara and Miller’s relationship take place within the theater’s walls—most memorably, a scene where Clara halts their makeout session (again, at Miller’s place of work), to declare that she’s a virgin as Clueless plays onscreen. (The obvious virgin-who-can’t-drive joke goes unsaid in the movie.)
AMC has also announced a Regretting You sweepstakes, hosted specially themed screenings, and promoted the movie on social media. Reddit users picked up on the AMC promotion from the trailer alone—and so have multiple film critics since watching the movie. “A truly deranged amount of AMC product placement,” wrote Indie Wire, with The Hollywood Reporter calling the integration “agonizingly unsubtle” in nature. That review also notes the multiple “Paramount plugs,” particularly in relation to Miller’s love of movies. His teenage bedroom is practically a shrine to Paramount Pictures releases of yesteryear—some more realistic for an adolescent boy to idolize (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Patriot Games) than others (who showed this kid Terms of Endearment?).
Vanity Fair has reached out to representatives for both Paramount Pictures and AMC Theatres, but has yet to hear back about the terms of a potential partnership. But it’s not hard to draw the connection, given that AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron said that he expects Paramount to increase its theatrical release slate under the leadership of chairman and CEO David Ellison following the company’s sale to Ellison’s Skydance Media in August. Ellison told CNBC at the time that “we’re going to invest into our studios business” with Paramount releasing 6 to 8 movies next year, and increasing to 15 in 2027.
