John Travolta And Katherine Heigl Are Teaming Up For A Rom-Com, And It Could Double As A Pulp Fiction Reunion

John Travolta in Paradise City and Katherine Heigl in Firefly Lane
(Image credit: Saban Films/Netflix)

Although both John Travolta and Katherine Heigl have both been active in Hollywood for a long time, their paths have never crossed professionally, but that will soon change. The two actors have signed on to a romantic comedy that will soon start being shopped around. Even better, this upcoming movie could end up reuniting Travolta with another member of the Pulp Fiction cast.

Travolta and Heigl are coming together for That’s Amore!, which is being put together by Palisades Park Pictures and will go on sale at the Cannes Film Festival next week. Per the official film synopsis provided by Variety, Travolta is playing Nick Venere, who’s described as “a modern day Marty,” in that “he’s never been married and his best dating years are well behind him. He’s never heard the words ‘I love you’ and figures he never will. Then in comes Heigl’s Patty Amore, who is “shy and introverted” and “filled with various tics and nervous habits.” Those things, along with the combination of her father’s overprotectiveness and “a secret from her past” have resulted in her not dating anymore.

So clearly there are a lot of issues between the two of them, but when Nick and Patty literally bump into each other, the sparks will immediately fly. However, since this is a rom-com, their dating will be complicated by their families getting involved, which will obviously produce hilarity. Green Book’s Nick Vallelonga is directing That’s Amore!, and additionally, it was reported that Christopher Walken is in talks to join the flick. If I had to guess, he’s presumably up for the role of Patty’s father. Along with him and Travolta both starring in Pulp Fiction (although they didn’t share any screen time), they also worked together on 2007’s Hairspray.

In addition to the aforementioned talent, the crew working on That’s Amore! Includes includes cinematographer Dante Spinotti, production designer Gianni Quaranta, editor Steven Rosenblum and costume designer Besty Heimann, as well as David Polemeni, Tamara Birkemoe and Mark Damon all executive producing. Filming is expected to begin this August. We’re a long ways off from even speculating about if this will go down as one of the best romantic comedies of all-time, but it will be interested to see how John Travolta and Katherine Heigl do leading a movie together. Travolta also has American Metal set to come out later this year and Cash Out at a yet-to-be-revealed date. This will be Heigl’s first movie since 2021’s Fear of Rain, but she did recently star in the drama series Firefly Lane, which can be viewed with a Netflix subscription.

Time will tell which studio will end up distributing That’s Amore! and when it will be released, but for now, get the lay of this year’s cinematic land by looking over the 2023 new movie releases

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.