Netflix‘s 13 Reasons Why was groundbreaking in its portrayals of gay adolescence, and now a new feature-length film to be released on the streaming giant will focus even more prominently on being gay in high school, though through a decidedly more comedic lens.
Alex Strangelove will follow high school senior “Alex Truelove” as he begins to question his sexuality while dealing with all the usual trappings of teenage life.
Related: Netflix destroys homophobe with just 3 simple words
Via the project’s synopsis:
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“Things get complicated when [Alex] meets a handsome and charming gay kid from the other side of town who unwittingly sends him on a roller-coaster journey of sexual identity.”
Been there!
The film was produced by Ben Stiller and directed by Craig Johnson, who calls it “a fun, funny, and flirty film located down the street from Pretty in Pink, around the corner from Superbad, and right next door to new neighbor Love, Simon.”
Related: Netflix shuts down ANOTHER homophobe in a single glorious tweet
It stars Daniel Doheny (Supernatural, HumanTown), along with Madeline Weinstein, Antonio Marziale, Joanna Adler, Isabella Amara, and William Ragsdale.
There’s no trailer yet, but we’ll let you know when that changes.
The film is set to premiere this week at the San Francisco International Film Festival and will be available to stream on Netflix June 8.
In February it was announced that Ryan Murphy will bring two new series to Netflix.
AlexBlack
Love, Simon and these kinds of films are awesome and represent some real progress, but until producers have the balls to actually depict the fact that JUST LIKE HETEROSEXUAL KIDS, LGBT kids are figuring out things like gender preference way, way, way before they are the 17 or 18-year-old characters we see in most TV and movies, it is still just another story adults tell each other.
This is an observation, not a complaint really. I know we are seeing real progress towards undoing the ‘abnormalization’ of queer kids at a rate not seen before.
Daniel-Reader
Or even more groundbreaking – just like heterosexual kids, most LGB kids know their gender from the get-go and their orientation early on and have no questions about it at all. It’s many people around them that often have the problems with it – not the LGB person.
TimothyBeauchamp
Word and agree with Daniel-Reeder.
enlightenone
A Biracial teen! I agree that is progress. Next progress, a black gay teen?
ShowMeGuy
***“a fun, funny, and flirty film located down the street from Pretty in Pink, around the corner from Superbad, and right next door to new neighbor Love, Simon.” ***
So, in other words…..GBF……yessss guurl….we’ve seen that show already.
Kangol
This storyline sounds very close to Nick Burd’s 2009 novel The Vast Fields of Plenty. Hmm. Something tells me the writers didn’t crack that book, though.
Evji108
Netflix’s male gay content is limited – always the same old films and TV series, I am glad they are putting out this new film, but I sure wish they would update their gay content more often and with better quality current productions from around the world.
hexadecimal
You should check out Revry. It’s a newer queer streaming platform – still building it’s library but definitely on the right track when it comes to showcasing multi-cultural content, not focused exclusively on white gay boys, and telling stories other than coming out. The have a free linear channel too on their website.
Bromancer7
Wouldn’t it be nice if stuff like this was being produced by people who were, y’know, actually gay?
shakes_head
Would be great to see queer stories that aren’t centered around waspy twinks, but I guess those are the only stories worth telling again and again and again and…