What is the statistical probability of meeting your soulmate in the hellscape that is holiday airport travel? Haley Lu Richardson and Ben Hardy are about to find out in Love at First Sight. Adapted from Jennifer E. Smith’s 2011 novel The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, the film stars Richardson and Hardy as Hadley and Oliver, two travelers united by fate — or a missed flight, depending on your outlook — as they travel to London from New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. You can catch a sneak peek of the first four minutes of the new romantic comedy above, only on Tudum. 

In the clip, Hadley is competing in the Olympic sport that is navigating a crowded airport in the days leading up to Christmas. Unfortunately, she finds herself at the gate four minutes after her flight has taken off. With almost no battery life left on her phone and a hard deadline to get to London ahead of her father’s wedding the next day, she books a last-minute business class ticket and hopes for the best. “We filmed a standstill airport,” director Vanessa Caswill told Tudum about the opening scene. “Nothing was flying in or out because of the pandemic. So we had this small little terminal to ourselves.”

As Hadley hunts for an outlet to save her dying phone, she comes face-to-face with Oliver, a compelling stranger who offers her a lifeline: his charger. The two lock eyes, and it’s as if the world has suddenly melted away. “That was the scene we used for the chemistry read between Haley Lu and Ben,” Caswill says of the meet cute and the moments that follow. “It was quite pressurized because we were like, ‘We have to get this right.’ ” 

Still, the director knew that she could rely on the actors’ phenomenal chemistry to pop on-screen. “It’s undeniable,” she said of their rapport. “Haley Lu and I came on board at the same time, [but] it was quite a big casting process to try and find Oliver,” Caswill added. “Finally I met Ben Hardy and I just loved him instantly. I found him so charming and surprisingly open and kind of vulnerable in a way about who he is and how he is. It blew me away. And I said to Haley Lu, ‘I can’t wait for you to meet him.’ They met on Zoom, and they did that read and it was instant. Instant.”

Narrating Hadley and Oliver’s journey toward love — and each other — is a brand new character: an omniscient narrator played by The Good Place’s Jameela Jamil. “I think [she] makes the whole thing quite tongue-in-cheek,” Caswill said. “I like that she’s kind of playfully talking to the audience and saying, ‘Hey, we know what we are. We know that we’re making a rom-com here.’ ” 

That cheeky self-awareness is an homage to Caswill’s own favorite of the genre: Mike Newell’s Four Weddings and a Funeral. Like that 1994 movie, the director hopes to toe the line between the banter and butterflies of new love, and the deeper emotions that go into sustaining it. “I really want people to feel uplifted and heart-warmed, but I also want [the movie] to speak to a truth about love,” she said. “Love is not easy, and love isn’t about that first spark, it’s something that can really hurt, [and] it only works if you open yourself up to that potential, that possibility. There’s a big act of vulnerability in love: There’s so much to lose, and there’s so much to gain.”

See what challenges and rewards lie ahead for Hadley and Oliver when Love at First Sight streams on Netflix on Sept. 15.