Netflix has announced that The Kissing Booth 2 is officially happening. The streaming platform released a teaser video to get fans excited for the sequel, and it appears to have worked. Last year’s adaptation of Beth Reekles was a huge success for Netflix, though it was panned by critics and currently holds a 13% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The streaming giant’s CCO Ted Sarandos called the first installment “one of the most-watched movies in the country, and maybe in the world.”
Netflix claims that one in three viewers has re-watched The Kissing Booth, which is 30% higher than their normal average of repeat viewings. With that kind of success, it seems like a no-brainer to have the original cast return for The Kissing Booth 2. Vince Marcello (Teen Beach Movie) returns to direct the sequel from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jay Arnold. The project is being produced by Marcello, Michele Weisler, Andrew Cole-Bulgina, and Edward Glauser.
At this point in time, no story details have been announced as of this writing, bit it is imagined that The Kissing Booth 2 will have a similar premise to the original. The first movie focuses on two best friends, Elle Evans (Joey King) and Lee Flynn (Joel Courtney) who have a lot of rules about their friendship. Elle starts dating Lee’s older brother Noah (Jacob Elordi), which is a violation of rule number 9: relatives totally off limits. The romantic teen comedy unravels from there and gets even more complicated when the duo decides to start a kissing booth for a school carnival.
Beth Reekles’ 2011 young adult novel The Kissing Booth was originally published on Wattpad, which is an online community for readers and writers to publish user-generated stories in different genres. The story won the Watty Award for Most Popular Teen Fiction in Wattpad’s annual writing contest and by 2012, the story had amassed over 19 million views. In 2013, the story was published by Penguin Random House and became a big seller, which is how Netflix came on board to adapt her original story. It isn’t clear if Reekles will be involved with The Kissing Booth 2 at this time.
While Netflix touts The Kissing Booth as a great streaming success, the movie was torched by critics, with many calling it sexist and a few noting that it is a “regressive look at relationships that highlights the worst impulses of the genre.” The movie and book have been criticized for being too cliché and too predictable, but the streaming platform saw huge numbers when they released it back in May 2018. There is no release date set for The Kissing Booth 2, but Netflix is confident that it will be just as big, if not bigger, than the first installment. You can watch The Kissing Booth 2 teaser trailer below, thanks to the Netflix YouTube channel.
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