Megan Vick has covered pop culture for almost 20 years. She is a fandom expert who’s written for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, TV Guide, The A.V. Club and more.
Two weeks ago, The Ankler published reading recommendations from 100 notables, from Ravi Ahuja to Molly Shannon to Zohran Mamdani — a feature that ricocheted ’round the internet and launched scores of social-media debates. Last week, Ankler deputy editor Christopher Rosen continued our books streak with a confession: He hasn’t finished a novel in 20 years, putting him in the rarified company of Clavicular, Kanye West and the president of the United States.
Today we continue our series with a deep dive on the pipeline that brings popular romance novels to streaming screens — and what that pipeline is delivering next.
It’s been six months since hockey drama Heated Rivalry ended its first season on HBO Max and Crave and became a full-on cultural sensation. Adapted from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novels, the Canadian series seemed to usher in a new wave of hockey romances: Netflix followed with Finding Her Edge in January, and Amazon Prime Video scored its own viral hit with the Off Campus series, based on Elle Kennedy’s bestselling Briar University novels.
But the trend was predictable a year and a half before Shane Hollander met Ilya Rozanov in the show’s opening scene, because hockey was BookTok’s main obsession not too long ago. Prime Video didn’t buy Off Campus because a small Canadian streamer was adapting Game Changers; it pounced on the viral reaction to audiobook clips from Kennedy’s novels.
And while the ice isn’t melting anytime soon, the BookTok pipeline points to a pivot toward darker heroes and bigger budgets in the coming years. “Shadow daddies” and their morally gray human counterparts are coming — but is Hollywood prepared to feed an insatiable and exacting romance audience?
Dissecting and Obsessing
BookTok — the corner of TikTok devoted to dissecting and obsessing over books — has, in the seven or eight years since the app launched in the U.S., turned authors like Emily Henry, Sarah J. Maas and Ali Hazelwood into megastars.
“What’s exciting about BookTok is that it is not to be manipulated,” says UTA media rights agent Mirabel Michelson. “It is really fan-driven. It is reader-driven. You can’t predict what might pop.” (You can’t predict what will pop, but you can spot what already has: “As Seen on TikTok” stickers now dot bookstore shelves.)
That rabid audience is driving rights deals into seven figures for the hottest properties. Book adaptations drove 9 billion global views on Netflix alone in 2025, accounting for more than 20 percent of the streamer’s viewing hours. Studios and streamers get book arcs in advance, but a finger on the pulse of what BookTok is devouring has become a reliable way to predict which productions will land.
“IP is still king, for better or worse. Hollywood is in a moment of real fear around original ideas,” says screenwriter Anna Klassen, who is writing Anna Todd’s Last Sunrise films for Amazon and adapting Rebecca Yarros’ The Last Letter. “There’s only so much ‘proven’ material left to mine. Books have stepped into that gap: they let studios gamble on fresh ideas and stories that still feel like a safe bet.”
The appeal is structural, Klassen adds: “Romance works because it’s character- and relationship-driven…. It’s also built-in IP with a devoted, vocal fanbase that delivers a guaranteed audience and free marketing before a single frame is shot.”
Hollywood got the message that love on the ice was a good formula. But all crazes ebb, and the players best poised to keep winning are already chasing BookTok’s next obsession: shadow daddies.
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