Netflix announced today that Lindsay Lohan will star in and produce a new romance feature, "Return to You," starring Henry Golding, according to Deadline. The film, directed by Mark Waters, the man behind Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, is set in 2008 and follows a "powerful but lonely attorney" who accidentally receives an emotional DVD a dying woman sent to her husband, and follows the clues on the disc to find him.
Set in 2008. A 2026 Netflix film that takes place eighteen years ago. That is not a period piece, that is a time loop. The rom-com machine that made Lohan run on 2005 power, and the only way to run it again is to move the clock back three years. The 2008 setting is not a creative choice, it is a maintenance decision.
The plot device is even better. The entire movie turns on a DVD, a physical disc, passed from one pair of hands to another. A streaming service whose whole business is the death of the disc has made a movie whose MacGuffin is a DVD. Netflix will not even ship you this film with a DVD. The disc exists in the story the same way Lohan exists in the story: a prop from the last economy, redeployed.
The machine was rebuilt piece by piece. Mark Waters directs, the Freaky Friday and Mean Girls man. Brad Krevoy produces, the man behind Falling for Christmas and Irish Wish. And the star is producing on top of starring. The Remaster is no longer a one-off, it is a format with a track record and a credit block. A powerful but lonely attorney is still Cady Heron, she just got a corner office.
YOUR TURN: If the movie is set in 2008, is the sequel set in 2010?
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