Billy Eichner to Write, Star in Rom-Com

Billy Eichner is "excited, terrified, completely shocked, and proud as hell" to be co-writing and co-starring in a "big" romantic comedy for Universal. News of the project was announced by Deadline on Tuesday. The feature, Eichner's first in a lead role, will be produced by Judd Apatow and co-written and directed by Nick Stoller (Neighbors, Forgetting Sarah Marshall).

Eichner got his start with his own in-your-face roving game show, Billy on the Street and has since grown into more of a household name with a recurring role on Parks and Recreation, as a lead in Julie Klausner's Difficult People, and a member of the Ryan Murphy Televisual Universe.

The comedy will follow the romance between two men with commitment problems. The announcement follows the success of 2018's Love, Simon, which was the first major studio film to focus on a gay teen romance. As noted by IndieWire, the last studio film for an adult audience to feature a gay romance was 1997's In & Out. While both films provided representation of gay characters to wider audiences, those representations were limited to how their leads dealt with coming out. Eichner, however, has never been one to hide in a closet—so here's hoping his rom-com won't waste any time there, either.

Rebecca Linde is a writer and cultural critic in NYC. She tweets about pop culture and television @rklinde.

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