Chris Pine is in The Catch now that production is underway, and Emma Stone is carrying one telling prop from the set: a New York Mets ballcap clipped to her bag. The film is already being read as a baseball-rom-com hybrid, with Pine alongside Stone and Dave McCary directing.
In June, Ashley Padilla joined the cast, and that late addition fits a project still taking shape on set. The production window matters because it shows the movie is not being marketed as a finished nostalgia piece; it is being built in real time, with new casting and visual clues surfacing while cameras are rolling.
Emma Stone and Chris Pine
Emma Stone pushed The Catch over the line by making it her next project, which puts Pine in a commercially useful lane: a rom-com pairing that can sell on star chemistry before a frame of the film reaches theaters. The movie is scheduled for the third week of May 2027, so the studio still has nine months of postproduction and promotion to turn the current set chatter into a release campaign. Chris Pine anchored eight years of J.j. Abrams Star Trek, and that kind of franchise familiarity gives this casting a built-in comparison point even if the new role is built on different material.
The setup is also unusually specific. Stone’s character is described as “the most hated woman in baseball,” which points to a public-facing role inside the story rather than a private romance plot. That helps explain why the Mets cap matters as a visual cue, but it does not settle whether Pine is playing a pitcher; the wardrobe hint can suggest the world of the film without locking down his character the way a script credit would.
Tim Robbins on set
Earlier in the week, Tim Robbins was seen on set with Emma Stone and Ashley Padilla, which adds another layer of veteran casting around the film’s central pairing. For a project still in production, that kind of on-set grouping usually signals that the ensemble is being assembled scene by scene rather than introduced all at once in a full rollout.
That matters for readers tracking The Catch as an industry bet, not just a casting announcement. The film is being positioned in the Bull Durham and Notting Hill mold and aimed at the Devil Wears Prada audience, so every new image from set is part of the sales pitch. Right now, the pitch is simple: Pine has joined Stone in a project that is still shooting, still revealing pieces, and still heading toward a May 2027 launch.
