The Ending of Love Hurts, Explained by Director Jonathan Eusebio (EXCLUSIVE)
The director talks about setting up a sequel and the scenes that got cut.
**SPOILER WARNING! The following contains major spoilers for Love Hurts!**
87North Production's Love Hurts (in theaters now, click here for tickets) just might be the most perfectly balanced date movie: one half superb action, and the other half a charming rom-com... with a little bite.
Written by Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore and developed for first-time feature director, Jonathan "JoJo" Eusebio, Love Hurts stars an endlessly talented cast including Oscar winners Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and Ariana DeBose (Steven Spielberg's West Side Story), as well as Daniel Wu (Tomb Raider), Cam Gigandet (Violent Night), Rhys Darby (Our Flag Means Death) and even Sean Astin (Stranger Things).
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The story centers on seemingly mild-mannered, Milwaukee super real estate agent Marvin Gable (Quan). A workaholic dedicated to his calling, he's content making his client's dreams come true. But that all falls apart when the woman who literally got away, Gable's old colleague, Rose (DeBose), comes back to town with a settle to score. Quiet Marv gets outed by his former unrequited crush for the dangerous mob hitman he used to be, and his life will never be the same. Together, they'll face off against the local mob and entangle a whole lot of other people in their mess.
Director Jonathan Eusebio explains what happens at the end of Love Hurts
By the end of Marvin and Rose's terrifying adventure in Love Hurts, he finally finds the bravery to admit to Rose that he loves her and they share a passionate kiss. But theirs isn't the only happy ending, as an informal epilogue clues us in on what happens to the rest of the rag-tag ensemble of characters.
Raven (Mustafa Shakir) and Andrea (Tipton) decide that love is the great unifier; Otis (André Eriksen) makes peace with his very irritated but unseen wife, Cindy, earning his assassin buddy King's (former NFL great Marshawn “Beastmode” Lynch) hearty approval; and last but not least, we see Rose back bartending, and a very suave Marv arriving in shades, ready to sweep her off her feet.
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Eusebio brings the film in at a breezy 83 minutes, which made us wonder how much of Marv's mayhem ended up on the cutting room floor?
"I wanted to keep everything that I shot," Eusebio told NBC Insider. "A lot of things come out in post. I'm an action person. I love choreography and action design and things like that. So, if I can make the action scenes bigger, I would — in a heartbeat — keep those. But there's a fine balance between that and having a story and characters that people relate to. So that's always the hardest thing for me, is how you balance that with the emotional, right? It's just finding that balance."
Love Hurts director on the prospects of a sequel
Could this excessively violent couple, or any of these misfits, for that matter, have more adventures in them?
Eusebio said he very much hopes so, and that he would love to make a Love Hurts sequel. "I just wanted to make it open-ended and have people feel their own endings for each character. And I think we did it," he said with pride. "As long as you feel like you leave the audience wanting more, or wanting to see more of them, that helps the sequel, maybe?"
Love Hurts is now exclusively in theaters everywhere. Click here for tickets.
