Variety reports that Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) and Rebecca Hall (The Gift) are set to star in Brian Crano’s Permission, a romantic comedy about two people who are in love but are pressured by their (insecure) friends to sow some wild oats before getting married. Crano, who’s directed a series of romantic advice-laden video shorts, has rounded up a cast that includes Jason Sudeikis, Gina Gershon, Blindspot’s François Arnaud, and The Good Wife’s Sarah Steele.
Hall and Stevens will star as a newly-engaged couple whose healthy relationship is revealed to be the bane of their friends’ existence during a “drunken toast” given by their best friend (because they share everything, get it?). Hall and Stevens’ characters are encouraged to see what else is out there before settling down, presumably because their friends assume they didn’t really look hard enough for “the one.” Instead of getting new friends, the couple takes their advice—with sexy results (we’re guessing, anyway). There’s no word on who Sudeikis is playing, but he’s been making the rounds in movies with similarly gray romantic areas: He was a husband with a wandering eye (whose wife was prepared to turn a blind eye) in 2011’s Hall Pass, and a single guy with a wandering, uh, something else in the genre-reviving rom-com, Sleeping With Other People.