Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra…Tessa and Hardin. If you’re not familiar with the protagonists of history’s latest, greatest love story, it means the YA phenomenon of the After series must’ve passed you by.
It started as One Direction fanfiction turned into a series of bestselling novels, before getting adapted into the melodramatic film After and its sequels After We Fell and After We Collided. The fourth and final movie in the franchise, After Ever Happy, arrives in Australian cinemas from September 8.
Australian actress Josephine Langford returns to play Tessa, a once-naive college student who is flying solo by now in Seattle whilst her tumultuous relationship with bad boy Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) only grows more complex. They first hooked up in a “was I a f**king bet?!” situation, with countless misunderstandings and jealous episodes causing conflict between ’em in the recent sequels.
Could it be family drama that finally causes the couple to call it quits? He just found out his dad is someone other than the man he’s known his whole life, and her own dad is an inconsiderate deadbeat. In the trailer below, Tessa reads Hardin’s emo prose in a big black book with “After” printed on the cover. Could his story be…the very story we’ve been reading and watching for the last couple years??
Filmed back to back in Bulgaria with the previous entry, After Ever Happy has a very clunky title and a lot of sensuous, tortured pop on its soundtrack. It’s an essential watch for fanfic completionists, who will be dying to see whether the angsty main couple can end up together.
We reckon it’ll be a Grease situation: she gets a little more edgy for him, he loses some of his rebellious edge for her. And they’ll be happy ever after! Or Ever After Happy, we suppose.
