Are Rom-Coms Dead?

Where art thou, rom-coms?

You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, 10 Things I Hate About You—these classic rom-coms ruled the box office in their heyday and continue to stay in rotation as comfort-watches across generations. But they did more than entertain us: They quietly taught us how to date. From awkward first kisses to missed connections and romantic rejection, these films modeled the messy social cues of falling in love (even if it was a tad unrealistic, cheesy and mildly chaotic). 

Today, though, those crowd-pleasing rom-coms are all but missing from theaters and streaming services—and an entire generation has come of age without that masterclass in messy coming-of-age moments. Of course, the genre still exists, but today’s flicks are few and far between, often lacking the same nostalgic pull as ’90s and early 2000s standouts—from Bridget Jones’s Diary to 500 Days of Summer and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Even this year’s slew of holiday meet-cute movies (and there were plenty) don’t hold up to the timeless appeal of The Holiday, Love Actually or even Elf. They just don’t do it like they used to: a handsome newly elected British prime minister falling for his junior staffer; a slightly stalkerish videographer confessing his love to his best friend’s new wife via cue cards; a house-swapping Californian who falls for a strapping English dad. These aren’t just iconic scenes from bingeworthy movies—they’re cultural moments. And today’s films just don’t stack up.

So what caused the falloff? Like most things, it comes down to money. Per Parade, major studios have increasingly shifted focus toward big-budget franchises and massive blockbusters—see: Avatar, Dune, Top Gun, Oppenheimer—that reliably gross billions, leaving midbudget fall-in-love flicks and other genres in the dust. 

“The legacy studios are definitely making fewer romantic comedies than they were 20–30 years ago during the genre’s modern heyday,” explains critic Kimber Myers, “and that’s largely because they stopped being such a sure bet at the box office.” It’s a classic chicken-or-the-egg scenario: If studios invest less money and resources into rom-coms, fewer people show up, so they make them less—and round and round it goes.

Many mod attempts at rom-coms tend to fall short—predictable, overly silly and baited with big-name casts that feel, in a word, unoriginal. Still, the genre hasn’t completely died off, and there’s reason for optimism. Highly anticipated films like People We Meet on Vacation (January 2026), You, Me & Tuscany (April 2026) and The Summer I Turned Pretty movie (TBD) may spark the rom-com renaissance we’ve all been craving.

Because without rom-coms, we’re not just losing a genre—we’re losing a shared cultural playbook for love. One that showed us how to flirt, how to fail, how to recover and how to try again. And that’s a lesson worth rebooting.

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