‘Love Again’ Filmmakers on Getting Celine Dion to Make Her Acting Debut — and Record New Music — for Sony Rom-Com

variety.com:

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor How did writer-director Jim Strouse get Celine Dion to play herself and write five new songs for his film “Love Again?”  “It took months, maybe even a full year,” Strouse tells Variety. “There was a lot of thought, eating, letters and lookbooks.”  The Sony feature-length stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas (Mira) and Sam Heughan (Rob) as depressed singles that meet in a not-so-ordinary way after inadvertently exchanging a series of intimate and embarrassing text messages.

Dion makes her big-screen debut in the romantic comedy portraying a semi-fictionalized version of herself. Adapted from the 2016 German film “Texts for You” (“SMS für Dich”), Screen Gems acquired the rights and it came to the filmmaker after a general meeting with Scott Strauss, the company’s executive vice president.

Strouse found the film charming and a good blueprint that he could shape up after a few key changes. “In that film, there’s a larger-than-life fictional singer played by Henriette Boot, and we all thought if we could put a real artist in there it would be more interesting and have their life speak to the themes of the film,” Strouse says.

Dion was at the top of their wish list. Who better to speak about love than the queen of love songs? “We didn’t know if we could get her but that was always the dream,” adds Strouse, who thought he had a chance at securing her participation since “we’re all part of the Sony family,” he says. “I thought it would be easy.