


We put the question of why the Sleepless and Seattle script still works after all these years, to Obst, who's gone on to produce movies such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and to three screenwriters in the entertainment industry, people who've created some of the most fantastic romantic comedies to come along in the past few years. It all made for, as Annie says in the movie, "magic." And of course we had two delicious stars, who were at their peak of adorableness, and were great together." So it was the conception for the film, in terms of this being, like An Affair to Remember, a romance for all time.

And knew what she wanted to do from the outset. "There are really no references to time and place, apart from An Affair to Remember," Obst says. Lynda Obst, who was an executive producer on the film and a good friend of Ephron, who died in 2012, tells Yahoo Entertainment her theory: "It holds because of its writing, obviously, because it's classically written." Notable exceptions are when Annie uses the computer pre-Google and references to the 1957 romance movie An Affair to Remember, in which the main characters are supposed to meet at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day. The story of Tom Hanks's Sam, a man who was recently widowed struggling to recover from heartbreak while fathering his 8-year-old son, Jonah (Ross Malinger), connecting over the radio with Meg Ryan's Annie, a woman who's found a humdrum partnership but is seeking true love, continues to warm hearts. Critics and fans alike continue to rank the movie among the greatest romantic comedies of all time.

Ward, and with an assist from her sister Delia Ephron, an associate producer on the film, was nominated for her third Oscar for it. Writer/director Nora Ephron, who overhauled the script originally penned by Jeff Arch and David S. They're supposed to have been swooning over each other, or at least - according to a well-worn trope - hating each other so that, in the end, they can suddenly realize that they're meant to be together.Īnd yet, this movie, which was released June 25, 1993, clearly did work, earning more than $127 million at the domestic box office and $228 million internationally, on a budget of $25 million, according to the 2017 book I'll Have What She's Having. Sleepless in Seattle should never have worked It's a romantic comedy in which the two main characters don't even meet until the last scene. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan star in the romantic comedy classic "Sleepless in Seattle." (Illustration by Celina Pereira for Yahoo/Photo: Everett Collection)
