Book to Screen
‘People We Meet on Vacation’ Netflix Adaptation: Premiere Date, Cast & Everything Else We Know
Emily Henry’s friends-to-lovers bestseller People We Meet on Vacation is headed to Netflix. After months of waiting (and scouring the internet for production footage), the streamer finally revealed exactly when the movie will be available to watch over and over again. If you’re not already, you’re about to become obsessed with Poppy and Alex.
There’s not an official trailer yet, but Netflix did drop a beachy video of Poppy and Alex speaking to each other offscreen. We’re already swooning.
Several of Henry’s novels are headed to the screen, but all eyes are on People We Meet on Vacation. This movie will mark Henry’s first book-to-screen adaptation. Swooon has the latest updates about the highly-anticipated film adaptation.
When is People We Meet on Vacation coming out?
People We Meet on Vacation’s premiere date is January 9, 2026. The movie will be released globally, so you can watch the movie anywhere in the world — just like Poppy and Alex intended!
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Who is playing Poppy and Alex in People We Meet on Vacation?
My Lady Jane breakout Emily Bader has been cast as Poppy Wright. She’ll be joined by The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes star Tom Blyth, who will play Alex Nilsen.
Director Brett Haley broke the news to Bader via Zoom. “Oh, I’m gonna cry,” an emotional Bader responded. Blyth joined the call and congratulated Bader.f
Henry surprised the leads and showed her support for the film. “I have been, like, kind of an anxious wreck about who would play these characters,” she began. “I just truly could not feel any more confident that my readers and then so many more people who don’t even know about the book are going to completely, completely fall in with Poppy and Alex, with you guys playing them.” (Watch the full video below.)
Watch Emily Bader find out she’s starring opposite Tom Blyth in People We Meet on Vacation — the feature adaptation of Emily Henry’s best-selling novel directed by Brett Haley. pic.twitter.com/XY90QJI36B
— Netflix (@netflix) August 2, 2024
More casting news was revealed in September 2024. With Emily in Paris‘s Lucien Laviscount attaching himself to the project as well as The Good Place‘s Jameela Jamil and You‘s Lukas Gage. Sarah Catherine Hook is also a part of the People We Meet on Vacation ensemble. She shared a story on Instagram to celebrate her upcoming role in the movie and declared, “Bringing back romcoms one vacation at a time.”
Henry published People We Meet on Vacation in 2021, and it debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The film adaptation was confirmed in 2022. Yulin Kuang, author of How to End a Love Story, is adapting the screenplay with Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo. In March 2024, Henry told Variety that the People We Meet on Vacation screenplay had “gone through a lot of different drafts.”
What is People We Meet on Vacation about?
The rom-com novel follows best friends Poppy and Alex, who take an annual summer vacation together. People We Meet on Vacation features dual timelines, the current summer and previous ones.
A trip to Croatia fractured their friendship, so Poppy plans one last trip to Palm Springs to get their relationship back on track. Over the course of their week together, life-altering truths come to light.
Kuang revealed that she’s incorporated Easter eggs for People We Meet on Vacation book lovers. “In the very first draft of People We Meet on Vacation, I knew what I would want as a reader was a recreation of the cover, and so I wrote something that was like a recreation of the cover that I think book lovers will identify,” she said on the Bookmarked podcast.
People We Meet on Vacation, Movie Premiere, January 9, 2026, Netflix
