Little Italy

About

Little Italy is a 2018 romantic comedy film starring Emma Roberts and Hayden Christensen as a couple starting a romantic relationship amidst a war between their families' competing pizza restaurants. After the poster was released online, it was mocked on social media for appearing to advertise an unusually bland movie. It also led to Prequel Memes in the Star Wars fandom, as actor Hayden Christensen played Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels.

History

The film's poster began spreading online on May 11th, 2018. A post in /r/movies^[1] featuring the poster gained over 18,000 upvotes. The poster features Emma Roberts and Hayden Christensen on the cover wearing the t-shirts of their respective pizza restaurants (shown below).

Online Presence

Twitter Reactions

After the poster began circulating online, social media users began to mock the poster for appearing to advertise a bland and old-fashioned film. Twitter user @rhymeswithaidan joked that he couldn't believe the movie was coming out in 2018 and not 2006, gaining 1,800 retweets and 8,200 likes (shown below, left). User @bobby joked about the poster simply asking "what's going on here?" gaining over 300 retweets and 3,000 likes (shown below, right).

Other Twitter users noticed that Roberts' shirt read "A Slice of Heaven," which is the same shirt worn by Julia Roberts in another pizza-centric romantic comedy, Mystic Pizza (Of note, Julia Roberts is Emma Roberts' aunt). The director of Little Italy, Donald Pietre, also directed Mystic Pizza, leading some users to speculate Little Italy may be a follow up to the film. User @TylerCoates tweeted about the connection, which was covered by The Daily Dot.^[2]

Related Memes

Additionally, some internet users made jokes regarding co-star Hayden Christensen, the actor best known for playing Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequel films. For example, Imgur user pumpactionpurdey photoshopped a scene from Revenge of the Sith onto the Little Italy poster (shown below, left). A post to /r/prequelmemes using an Attack of the Clones line as a snowclone related to pizza appeared on May 13th, 2018 (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References