What if a single song, an unmistakable melody, an unforgettable sound – could take you back in time, literally? Harriet (Lucy Boynton) finds music imitating life when she discovers beloved songs shared with her former boyfriend can take her back to the scene of the moment, giving her a second chance to twist fate.
In Searchlight Pictures‘ romance The Greatest Hits‘, Harriet realizes her favorite songs can literally transport her through time to revisit the best moments and memories with former boyfriend Max (David Corenswet) who she’s lost two years ago.
As seen in the trailer above, Harriet is grappling with the death of her boyfriend while attending a support group. “I can’t seem to pull myself back together,” she explains. Certains songs literally pull herself back into the past. She ends up navigating two worlds: the past and the present. Despite her friend telling her to “start living in the present again,” life becomes complicated when she starts uncovering her feelings for a new potential love interest (Justin H. Min) while questioning if she should change the past.
But Harriet can’t shake the nagging question, what if Max didn’t have to die?
For writer-director Ned Benson (The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby trilogy), the root of the story that became The Greatest Hits tracks back to 2008. Benson had recently read Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks – and the idea sparked about the connections between music and memory.
“I thought it was so interesting how the mind and music interact,” recalls the New York-born filmmaker. “And then I kind of came up with this concept of music as time travel. That was basically how it all started.” Benson wrote the first draft in 2009 but admits he hadn’t yet cracked the story. “Sometimes you’re just not quite ready,” he says. “And then I got busy with another film and some other projects and put it away.
After debuting the acclaimed trilogy, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, which he wrote and directed, and the Marvel Studios blockbuster Black Widow, which he penned, he returned to his time-travel story during the pandemic and reworked it into the draft that became the shooting script for The Greatest Hits. It would be sold to Searchlight Pictures and ultimately championed by producers Michael London, Stephanie Davis, Shannon Gaulding and Cassandra Kulukundis.
Although Benson’s latest film shares some of the same themes as the Eleanor Rigby trilogy, the filmmaker says that it takes a completely new approach. “I’m dealing with love, relationships, and grief again, but this is a much more magically real story,” he says. “This is about the beginning of relationships, the things we hang on to, and how one relationship can be necessary in order to move on to the next.”
Boynton is known for roles in Bohemian Rhapsody, The Pale Blue Eye and Barbie. Corenswet will appear in Twisters and was cast as Superman in James Gunn’s forthcoming Superman. Min previously starred in Shortcomings and After Yang.
The Greatest Hits will release in select theaters on April 5th before it begins streaming on Hulu on April 12th. The film also premieres at this year’s South by Southwest Festival.
