KJ Apa Returns to Romance in a New Love-Triangle Movie Tomorrow

Over the last decade, KJ Apa has become one of the brightest rising stars in Hollywood. The Jimmy star is having quite the time this year; after bringing icon Jimmy Stewart to life, Apa is set to take on the romantic comedy genre once more with the new film Falling, directed by James Krisel and Colin Krisel. Falling stars Apa, Isabel May, Archie Renaux, Emma Laird, Alex Jarrett, and Sophie Simnett. Ahead of the film’s home release on Digital and Demand, Collider is thrilled to bring you an exclusive first look at the film that features Jack (Apa) talking with his friends about a new girl that he’s falling for.

The new film is a fun return to the rom-com genre as well as a new entry in Apa’s romantic lead filmography. Apa is best known for playing the charming and lovable Archie Andrews on the hit show Riverdale, and fans getting to experience Apa in a new kind of romantic comedy is going to be exciting. Besides, who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned love triangle? Falling is described as follows: “Jack is a quick-witted but commitment-phobic guy who finds himself caught in a love triangle when he falls for Jillian, unaware that his best friend Johnny also harbors feelings for her.”

In our exclusive sneak peek from Falling, we get to see Jack talking with his friends about a girl that he has feelings for. His friends are giving him some sage advice, like, do not stalk the girl you’re crushing on by standing outside of her home. But the question is: Will Jack listen to his friends as they try to help him get the girl, or is this love triangle going to be harder to navigate? That’s the joy of a romantic comedy!

Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to
be somebody’s person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of
you.

You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have
already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most
durable way anybody has found to do this.

• When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy,
  conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
• You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is
  doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
• The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly
  until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
• You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.

You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own
life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the
relationship easier.

• This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of
  them equally seriously.
• You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a
  rival, and that never entirely goes away.
• It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each
  other, but whose turn it is this year.
• You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.

The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are
drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting
somebody you are not supposed to want.

• Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides,
  meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
• You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things
  more real than public ones.
• The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what
  it would cost either one to say it out loud.
• Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally
  stop hiding.

You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is
immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version
of it.

• Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five
  days, which is precisely the point of it.
• You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats
  decades of something merely comfortable.
• The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an
  enormous life afterwards because of it.
• You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the
  same way.

2026 Is a Big Year for KJ Apa

Falling comes right on the heels of the theatrical release of Jimmy. In Jimmy, Apa plays the beloved It’s a Wonderful Life actor Jimmy Stewart, mastering Stewart’s unique accent and telling an emotional story about his life off-camera. In Falling, fans can hear Apa use his natural New Zealand accent instead of bringing a good ol’ American boy to life, as he did for years on Riverdale.

You can watch Apa’s return to romance when Falling hits VOD tomorrow, November 10, when the film will be available for purchase or rent on platforms like Prime Video, Apple TV, and more. Jimmy is now playing in theaters. Stay tuned at Collider for more.