"Forget everything you think you know about sequels!" should be, but isn't, the tagline for the upcoming 10 Things I Hate About Life, a follow-up to the Heath Ledger-Julia Stiles teen romance 10 Things I Hate About You. As we previously reported, unlike more or less every other sequel ever made, this one has nothing in common with its predecessor in terms of characters, plot, or setting—rather, just a few words in the title, and a veteran TV director who's hoping to revisit the success of his film debut.
While the first film was an opposites-attract high school romance based on Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew, the follow-up is a romantic comedy whose central couple meet cute while attempting suicide, based on this thing that happened to director Gil Junger this one time. And now the sequel that has little connection to the original film also has little connection to its original star, as Evan Rachel Wood is stepping into the role originally meant for Hayley Atwell. Suburgatory's Thomas McDonell also stars as the two meet, generate some sparks, push each other away because of a misunderstanding, get some heartfelt advice from their wisecracking, non-white best friends, meet again due to an astonishing coincidence, decide to give it one more chance, then fall in love for real—all in the time it takes them to drop from the Golden Gate Bridge to the bay below. Or, you know, maybe they'll decide not to jump and go out for coffee.