LoveHit Is Adapting Austen and Brontë for Both Phone and Television
Updated: Oct 9
Pride and Prejudice has survived generations of new costumes, new casts and new arguments about Darcy. Now LoveHit is taking public-domain classics into vertical drama while also making horizontal feature versions for television buyers.
The Los Angeles studio launched in September 2026 with modern versions ofWuthering Heights,Pride and Prejudice andJane Eyre in its first slate. It is also working onThe Great Gatsby andBeauty and the Beast. ScreenMDM reports that each project is designed for roughly fifty short vertical episodes and a ninety-minute television movie. LoveHit plans to take the horizontal versions to MIPCOM.
One premise, two different rhythms
This is more interesting than cropping a television film into portrait orientation. LoveHit says it framed and edited for both formats. A phone story may hold on a face and end as a character makes an irreversible choice. A feature has to make the entire relationship arc feel satisfying at once. The same actors and locations can support both, but the audience's experience of time is different.
Public-domain titles also solve a marketing problem. Many viewers know the emotional contract before they press play. They know a version of the proud lover, the impossible estate, the woman refusing the role selected for her. The challenge is making the adaptation more than a recognizable name with new cliffhangers pasted onto it.
What the industry will learn
If both cuts find buyers and audiences, this could become an attractive production model. But two versions also mean more planning in script, framing and edit. The announcement gives a slate and sales plan, not proof of profitability. For writers, the useful question is which moments truly require a close, private phone frame and which need the breathing room of a feature.
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Viola Musaraj is a writer, novelist, micro and vertical drama producer, and interactive narrative designer with more than 140 million reads worldwide.
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