Inside 'One Night Only': The Black List Script That Built a Rom-Com Around a 12-Hour Window for Legal Sex
A romantic comedy about a city where premarital sex is illegal — except for one twelve-hour window each year — is sitting in theatres right now, and the people who built it are talking about how it came together.
One Night Only, directed by Will Gluck and produced by Universal Pictures, stars Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro as two singles hunting for a match during the one night when sex between unmarried people is permitted. The Hollywood Reporter published an interview with writer Travis Braun and producer Jacqueline Monetta on 9 August 2026 about the film's premise and the road from script to screen (The Hollywood Reporter).
Braun's screenplay topped the 2024 Black List — the annual industry survey of liked-but-unproduced scripts that has launched titles from Slumdog Millionaire to The Social Network. That recognition put the project on buyers' radar well before cameras rolled. Monetta, the producer, was the one who carried Braun's script to Gluck, the director behind the Peter Rabbit films and Easy A, giving the package its creative centre (The Hollywood Reporter).
Braun told The Hollywood Reporter he set out to write a movie about "the circus that is modern dating" and compress all of it into a single night. The result is a world, as The New York Times described it, where the government has banned premarital sex outright (The New York Times). Turner and Barbaro play the two people navigating that compressed, high-stakes window.
Monetta said the filmmakers deliberately left questions unanswered. The goal, she explained, is to keep audiences talking on the car ride home — a choice that turns the film's premise into a conversation rather than a tidy resolution (The Hollywood Reporter).
Universal opened One Night Only in US theatres on 7 August 2026, per the studio's official site (Universal Pictures). The Hollywood Reporter had already published its review on 6 August, a day before release (The Hollywood Reporter). The New York Times followed with its own coverage on opening day.
What stands out is how cleanly the premise serves the genre. A rom-com lives on a ticking clock — two people circling each other under pressure. Braun's twelve-hour legal window simply makes that clock literal, baked into the world's own rules. Monetta's decision to bring the script to Gluck, a director with a proven feel for romantic comedy rhythms, gives the concept a filmmaker whose instincts match the material's tone.
The film's journey from an unproduced Black List script to a wide theatrical release in roughly two years is, by industry standards, fast. Most Black List scripts take far longer to reach screens — many never do. That One Night Only moved from page to cinema in that window speaks to how quickly a strong hook, a willing producer, and a director with commercial track record can assemble a package at a major studio.
