David Iacono has landed Wes Bennett in Netflix’s Better Than the Movies, with Beatrice Kitsos set as Liz Buxbaum. The casting turns a long-fan-cast YA adaptation into a real production package.
The book has spent 44 consecutive months on monthly YA paperback list and 20 weeks on the weekly YA hardcover list. That kind of run helps explain why the lead pair matters now: the adaptation no longer lives only as a title and a development notice.
BookTok pushes Better Than the Movies
Beatrice Kitsos took to Instagram to offer herself up for an audition when fans submitted her for Liz. That is the kind of self-aware move these projects now invite, because BookTok has already done part of the casting work before a studio settles the matter.
BookTok fans had already strongly fan-cast David Iacono as Wes Bennett before Netflix made the casting official. The fit is obvious enough that the official announcement reads less like a surprise than a decision finally catching up with the audience’s shortlist.
Julia Hart leads the film
Julia Hart is directing the film adaptation, and Heather Flanders wrote the script with her. Jordan Horowitz is producing for Original Headquarters, with Shauna Phelan and Melanie Krauss also producing, which gives Netflix a full creative stack around the two lead roles.
Hart is no stranger to Netflix YA work; she previously helmed the Sunny Sandler-led coming-of-age drama Don’t Say Good Luck, which is set for August 14. For a film built on recognizable YA tropes, the combination of a proven director and locked-in leads is the clearest sign that this has moved beyond development chatter.
Netflix locks the lead pair
Better Than the Movies was announced for Netflix in May, and the new casting finally gives the adaptation its face and center of gravity. Kitsos will play Liz Buxbaum, while Iacono takes on her next-door neighbor, the role readers know as Wes Bennett.
That is the practical takeaway for readers of Lynn Painter’s novel: the adaptation now has the two roles that drive the story’s fake-relationship and enemies-to-lovers engine. The next question is whether Netflix moves quickly enough to turn that casting into production momentum before the book’s built-in audience cools.
