Hulu has released the first trailer for The Batman star Zoe Kravitz’s upcoming TV series based on the Nick Hornby novel High Fidelity, best known in the U.S. for having inspired the 2000 John Cusack movie of the same name and a short-lived 2006 Broadway show. The story centers on an antisocial record store owner, who views personal relationships as an extension of popular culture. In the novel, movie, and stage show, the lead character was male, but his time out, Kravitz will take on the role. Interestingly, Kravitz’s mother Lisa Bonet appeared in the 2000 movie as a potential rebound relationship for Cusack’s character.
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In the source material, after being dumped, a record store owner goes on a kind of “greatest hits” tour of bad breakups, seeking to figure out why none of his relationships work and what is going wrong. The lead character is not entirely sympathetic, as both he and the audience gradually learn the ways in which he has been self-sabotaging for years.
Despite the gender-swap, Kravitz’s character will apparently continue to be named Rob.
The original novel took place in the United Kingdom, but the film relocated it to Cusack’s native Chicago (but if was directed by English film director Stephen Frears, who also did The Grifters with Cusack). The TV series relocates the story to New York, where the trailer fills the screen with familiar (at least to New Yorkers) locales and imagery. Even so, there are several bits of set design, wardrobe, and dialogue that are essentially carbon copies of the Cusack film.
Here’s how Hulu describes the reinvented series: “A departure from Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel and beloved 2000 film, Hulu’s High Fidelity centers on Rob (Zoë Kravitz, who also serves as an executive producer), a female record store owner in the rapidly gentrified neighborhood of Crown Heights, Brooklyn who revisits past relationships through music and pop culture, while trying to get over her one true love. High Fidelity also stars Da’Vine Joy Randolph, David H. Holmes, Jake Lacy, and Kingsley Ben-Adir.”
The series was originally expected to run on Disney+, but has since been shifted to Hulu, which is also owned by Disney. The official explanation was that the series “evolved” into something that would be unsuitable for the children watching on Disney+, which leads to a question regarding whether anybody involved with optioning the project had read the book or watched the R-rated movie. Maybe they just thought High Fidelity, with a Broadway musical and all, could be transformed into a jukebox musical that would be a Gen-X take on High School Musical or something.
Either way, now it will hit Hulu on February 14.
