On March 25, filmmaker Nina Lee was about to give a speech to a room full of high school students, advising them how to navigate the Hollywood film business.
But the Atlanta native was in a tough spot. She was frustrated because her recent rom-com project, “That’s Her,” starring Coco Jones and Kountry Wayne, was stuck in post-production limbo — neither picked up nor flat-out rejected by the various studios she’d approached. Before starting her speech, she reposted her tweet warning audiences that studios were watching to see how the upcoming rom-com “You, Me & Tuscany,” now playing in theaters, performed at the box office.
“Met with a studio about my already shot romcom and they won’t buy it until they see how ‘You, Me & Tuscany’ does. Met with an exec about a romance script I have, they won’t buy it until they see how ‘You, Me & Tuscany’ does. Go see this film!” Lee wrote in a post on X that now has over half a million views.
A few hours later, when Lee finished her talk and checked her phone, she had numerous texts and notifications from friends and new followers. Her tweets had been picked up by popular X accounts like PopCrave and DiscussingFilm, with people sharing their incredulity over the situation.
“It’s bringing light to an issue that affects not just Black female directors or Black directors, [but] all minorities,” Lee tells Variety.
Lee’s film, “That’s Her,” follows the story of a corporate-climbing playboy falling for an office temp. The movie wrapped production last September and Lee spent the fall meeting with studios at sales screenings, but did not receive any offers.
“I had a lot of execs reach out to my manager, and they were like, ‘Oh, they want to meet you, because you did such an incredible job and they want to give you some words of encouragement,’” Lee recalls. She received praise for pulling off a large-scale production on a modest budget, but no other solid critiques. At the various meetings she had, five of them told her roughly the same thing: “We’re not at a place where we can purchase rom-coms, but there are some Black rom-coms coming out in 2026 we want to monitor and see how those do before moving forward.”
While the executives did not specifically name which projects they were eyeing, it was easy enough for Lee to infer they were referring to Universal’s “You, Me & Tuscany,” one of the few Black-led rom-coms from a major studio to hit theaters in recent years.
Produced by Will Packer, “You, Me & Tuscany” follows a young, free-spirited cook (Grammy-nominated singer-turned-actress Halle Bailey) who impulsively squats in an empty Tuscan villa and gets caught up in a world of adventure when she meets and falls in love with the homeowner’s cousin (“Bridgerton” alum Regé-Jean Page). It’s a sweet, sun-drenched story featuring all the well-worn rom-com tropes of mix-ups and misunderstandings. But the movie also carries the weight of pressure to perform at the box office.
It’s a pressure Packer — whose resume boasts smash hits like “Girls Trip” and 10 movies that have opened at No. 1 domestically, including the “Think Like a Man” and “Ride Along” franchise films — is used to navigating. He knows there’s “a lot of eyes” on his film, and that’s been the name of the game for Black filmmakers for decades.
“People from Oscar Micheaux to Spike Lee to the Hudlin and Hughes brothers, they’d all like a word, because they’ve been dealing with this way before Will Packer — and that is just the reality,” Packer quips.
When it comes to “You, Me & Tuscany” predicating the future of films like it, he adds: “If the dollars make sense, then you’ll see more of it and Hollywood will change and adjust. So, I am trying to do my part to be successful in a language that Hollywood understands — which is not really the language of social justice, it’s really the language of economics.”
Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón, who co-authors the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report, says Hollywood is ignoring its own data. “It’s never really an issue of if Black movie goers will support a Black-led movie, because you can see that they do,” she says.
In the 2025 report, Ramón and her team elaborated that within the top 20 theatrical films of the previous year, “BIPOC men unambiguously made up the largest audience share for ten of these films, whereas BIPOC women accounted for the largest audience share for another six films. White women and white men each made up the largest audience share for just one of these top 20 films.”
Ramón adds that if audiences are aware that a Black-led movie exists, they will go see it, which presents the first hurdle for Black-led films to overcome.
A few factors determine how well a movie does at the box office, according to Dr. Stacy L. Smith, founder of USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative: “It has to have a great story. Secondly, it has to be supported by production and marketing dollars. And lastly, it has to be released in a lot of theaters. Those determinations — production costs, marketing costs, distribution, density — are all in the hands of executives, and it’s clear that these executives are completely out of touch with Gen Z, and that over 40% of the U.S. population identifies as non-white.”
Without the promotional backing of studios, it feels near-impossible for films to achieve their full potential. And if studios don’t think the audience will return their investment, it is unlikely for them to push projects they don’t believe in.
Packer thinks “You, Me & Tuscany” wouldn’t have gotten made without the backing of Universal — not because it wasn’t a strong story, but studios view releasing rom-coms theatrically as a dicey proposition since the growth of streaming.
“It actually does matter what it does at the box office,” he says. [“You Me & Tuscany” is projected to more than $10 million, a solid start for a movie carrying an $18 million budget.]
“It matters for the Nina Lee’s of the world and for audiences that want to see films like this get made,” Packer explains. “It matters for the next white romantic comedy that somebody is thinking about green lighting as a theatrical proposition.” But there’s power in that, he adds: “Hollywood watches and then they react. Hollywood will react to the audiences more so than audiences realize; they have the power to dictate what’s made in Hollywood. You vote with your dollars.”
Bailey shared her take on Lee’s situation in an interview with Complex, saying, “I feel like it almost isn’t fair for us to have to [hear], ‘Oh, well, we’re gonna watch how this one does. And then we’ll green light you.’ We are known for breaking barriers and not letting anything stop us as a community, and I think that even when the goalposts may be moved every single time, we still will persevere, no matter what.”
As Black actors in Hollywood, Bailey and Page have both faced immense pressure and racism in their careers. Their castings as Ariel in Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid” and Duke Simon Basset in the Netflix series “Bridgerton,” respectively, spurned similar hate campaigns, with the hashtags #NotMyAriel and #NotMyDuke trending on social media. Despite the backlash, both projects went on to be major successes, paving the way for them to be seen as viable stars of a major studio movie.
Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page on the set of “You, Me & Tuscany,” directed by Kat Coiro.
Photo Credit: Giulia Parmigiani/
That’s no small feat, especially for Bailey, Smith points out. “Women of color typically are given the least amount of access and opportunity, and yet, our recent economic data has shown that they do just as well at the box office [as] their white male counterparts,” Smith explains, adding that while women of color represent about 20% of the American population, in 2025, only 15% of leading roles in films were portrayed by women of color.
In recent years, romantic comedies have been positioned as risky theatrical bets, with most rom-coms heading straight to streaming. The greenlighting of POC-led rom-coms, specifically, speaks to the interests of women, who, according to Smith, are responsible for “50% of ticket sales,” with slight genre variations.
“It’s really interesting that Hollywood has backed off from the idea of romantic comedies, because it’s more of an issue of underestimating the power of women at the box office,” says Ramón. “It’s a combination of the fact that people of color are really driving the theatrical industry success, and then you see that films are doing well due to women. It’s underestimating the fact that you could be making a ton of profit with [POC-led] romantic comedies.”
The topic of missed opportunity weighs heavily on Lee’s mind as well. Among the outpouring of support she received after her posts was a story from an Asian filmmaker who told her his original script received similar feedback from studios, telling him they were waiting to see how 2018’s “Crazy Rich Asians” performed. When it was a smash hit, he was reportedly told it was “an anomaly,” and studios were unsure if the success would “continue to translate.”
“How do you win when the goal is moving?” says Lee. “You think you see the goal, and you think you know how to shoot to score, but as soon as you think you’ve got it, they just move it. How do we as filmmakers survive when that keeps happening?”
The success of films created by and for certain demographics doesn’t necessarily pave the way for future opportunities. Take the billion-dollar success of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” in 2023 or the Academy Award-winning achievements of last year’s “Sinners,” for example. Will Hollywood take the right lessons away from those smash hits? That remains to be seen. But the hope is that the industry will recognize the financial incentive of introducing diverse perspectives.
As for Lee, her film “That’s Her” was selected for the American Black Film Festival, where it will make its world premiere next month. ABFF is a big showcase for the movie, which will screen in a lineup that includes buzzy projects like “Girl Dad,” starring Marsai Martin and Courtney B. Vance and produced by Oscar winner Jamie Foxx, plus Malcolm D. Lee’s Peacock thriller “Strung,” led by Chloe Bailey. Lee hopes that after making a splash in Miami Beach, “That’s Her” will capture the attention of distributors.
“We have stories to tell as well. Our stories matter,” says Lee. “Yeah, I win as a director, but then an audience wins because they get to see themselves.”
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