An Affair to Remember : ‘One Night Only’ Screenwriter Travis Braun
Photo by Nicole Rivelli, courtesy of Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
by CHAD KENNERK
“In the near future, premarital sex has been outlawed in the United States. Except for one night a year.”
That audacious logline launches Travis Braun’s heartfelt, high-concept romcom One Night Only, which topped the 2024 Black List – the annual industry survey of Hollywood’s most promising unproduced screenplays. The romcom made Braun the first writer to summit the famed list two years in a row, having previously scored with his script Bad Boy (currently in the works with Ke Huy Quan and Lili Reinhart set to star).
Braun’s path to becoming one of Hollywood’s most sought-after screenwriters started from the ground up, initially as an intern on Criminal Minds before becoming a production assistant under writer and showrunner Erica Messer. He was accepted into Nickelodeon’s talent development programme, eventually finding his way into children’s television at Disney, where he served as a staff writer on the series Vampirina and went on to create series such as T.O.T.S., Pupstruction, and Fast Layne. It’s an eclectic resume for a writer whose feature work tackles wildly inventive takes on the thriller and romcom.
Arriving in cinemas from Universal Pictures, One Night Only explores the madness of dating in our digital world, bringing Braun’s screenplay to life with director Will Gluck (Easy A, Anyone But You) at the helm. Set in New York City on the one night of the year when pre-marital sex is legal, Allie (Monica Barbaro) and Owen (Callum Turner) embark on a chaotic twelve hours in search of something genuine.
In conversation with screenwriter Travis Braun
Film Review (FR): What has this process been like for you moving from the Black List to production and release?
Travis Braun (TB): It's been phenomenal. It's honestly been so quick. It was basically 11 months from the time I wrote ‘Fade In’ on the first script until we were greenlit to make the movie. That sounds like a long time to people who don't know, but that is incredibly fast to write the script, get a director, get a cast, and have a studio on board. I think it's a testament to the group of artists that came together to do this and to Universal's belief in this movie, in Will, in these actors and also their belief in the ability for a romcom to be in theatres again, which is rare.
(FR): It's great to see romcoms back on the big screen. We need date nights again.
(TB): It's such a special thing, right? Going and seeing, especially a romcom in a theatre, that shared experience. I don't know what it is, but I always feel this communal sort of love. It’s hard to find these days, especially in our world. That you can go and have this group experience, feel these really strong emotions with a group of people. To me, there's something really special about it.
(FR): Your honeymoon doesn’t seem like the obvious time to think about dating. How did the idea come to you?
(TB): Yeah, I was on my honeymoon and reflecting on the crazy winding road it took to find my person, and I really wanted to write a movie about that. It seemed like that would make for a very long movie. I needed to find some box to put it in, which put some walls up and made this a more palatable story to approach. There are obviously so many facets to modern dating. That's when I landed on ‘one night’. Could I tell this whole movie in one night? And what would that look like?
Condensing all of the sort of things we complain about with dating, ghosting, infidelity and catfishing. What if you put all of that into one night and had two people trying to navigate that? That felt like a really cool, exciting landscape and playground to work in; the circus that goes on around sex and dating. Putting that into 12 hours felt like something I'd never seen before. That really got me excited to try to figure out, how the heck do I actually make that work?
(FR): Navigating dating in New York City is no easy task.
(TB): New York, to me, is a character in itself. It had to be New York because it's a playground in itself. It is a city where you never know who you're going to bump into, and that is a huge plot device in the movie.
(FR): You’ve talked about sitting on an idea – how long was One Night Only just another idea on the list? What has to happen before you get to the point where you want to try writing a draft?
(TB): Usually it's six months to a year of sitting on a note in my phone. With me going, ‘That's an interesting idea for a movie. I don't know how to crack it.’ This one, weirdly, was about a month. It was a month of thinking through different versions of the story and then just deciding. I was excited enough to dive in.
I wrote 60 pages of a draft and realised, ‘Oh, that's not the right version.’ It was really Owen and Allie in their own story on parallel tracks, not bumping into each other. A little Sleepless in Seattle. I just felt like, ‘I love these characters when they're in scenes together. I want to see them in scenes together.’ That was the big moment for me, where I realised, ‘Oh, okay, they need to keep crashing into each other through this night.’
Once I had that, then a lot of the scenes generated from there. I felt like, ‘Okay, I think I have a movie here.’ From there, it was the fastest script that I've ever written. It felt like there was such a clear road of what needed to happen.
(FR): Particularly with this script, you demonstrate why you’re a master of the logline. Is that where you usually start?
(TB): I wish there was a formula. I really do. I wish there was some clear-cut ‘This is my process’, but I don't really have a process. I think I spent a lot of my career trying to find a process, and this might change as I continue to grow and evolve as a writer. My feeling right now is that the fact that there isn't a process is really the process.
Sometimes it starts with an ending, or it can start with a character, or it can start with a scene. It can start with a title. Everything I've written has come from a different kernel of inspiration. It's not one size fits all. At least for me, I can't sit down and go, ‘Okay, time to write the next cool movie,’ and start with a log line or something specific. It really has to come from something I feel in my bones, and those are feelings. There's not really a process you can assign to that.
(FR): How do you cut through all the noise of the business and write what compels you?
(TB): I think the only thing you can do is to write something honest and truthful. That to me is what cuts the noise. As an audience member, I drive to our Burbank AMC a couple times a week looking for something that feels truthful, that feels honest and that I resonate with. And feels like an experience that is reflective of reality. That can be in sci-fi, that can be in a crazy fantasy movie, but there is a kernel of truth. There's something that's being conveyed within the story that feels deeply honest.
It's the thing I feel in the movies I love that really stands out to me. The filmmakers really captured that thing – what it means to live this human experience. I feel like that's our job. Sometimes that can be in a giant space opera and other times in a relationship story within a marriage. There are so many movies to point to that showcase that honesty and that truth and can cut through the noise more than any spectacle can.
(FR): Did the rigour of children's television hone your skills as you started expanding in the features?
(TB): Rigour is an interesting word choice, but I feel like what you're going for there is that there are so many episodes in kids' TV. There is such a cadence to it, because we're doing so much content. Every Monday we are breaking a new story. We are going up to the whiteboard and figuring out what's Act One, Act Two, and Act Three. Doing that every single week for almost a decade now, it is incredibly helpful to see so many different stories told in so many different ways. Which ones work best and which ones don't work so well. You learn something from both, and just getting reps and getting at bats.
I've learned so much being in a writer's room with a lot of smart people talking through stories day in and day out. Being forced to sit in a room and come up with these stories. I think it's the coolest job in the world. It's so fun. We get to sit around and make stuff up. But through that osmosis, I've definitely grown exponentially as a writer.
(FR): You reference a lot of signage in the script, such as Equinox gym marketing that reads, ‘August 1 is coming, make sure you are too,’ and Gatorade bragging about going ‘All Night Long’. Those tongue in cheek marketing messages really set the tone for what the production design team ultimately explored. What has that process been like for you to see this world come to fruition?
(TB): Yeah, literally my wildest dreams. One of the reasons I wrote this script was Anyone But You came out and proved that romcoms can work in a theatre. I got really excited about that because I love romcoms. Will proved that they still can work on this massive scale, and so he was top of the list in terms of directors for this movie when we started to send it out and get reads. His producing partner, Jacqueline Monetta, sort of beat down his door and didn't let him leave until he read the script, which I'm so thankful for. When he signed on to do it, things moved so quickly because he is such a proven filmmaker and he knows how to do this genre so well.
We got our cast, and it was such a cool experience to see the level of talent that was brought together because of him, this story and Universal's belief in it. It doesn't always happen. Movies are such an alchemy, and there are so many variables. To have something that everyone felt in their bones, ‘Oh, this is special,’ it's the coolest thing as a writer to see that happen. Monica and Callum are fantastic in this movie. I could not have dreamed up a better cast to say these lines and to bring these characters to life. I truly couldn't, because I look at some of the stuff they do and I go, ‘That's not on the page.’ I can't write that kind of chemistry. That's the hardest thing to convey, and they pull it off. It was super special for me to see it all come together.
(FR): Are you going to be in that Burbank AMC watching some reactions?
(TB): I might try to slip into a screen or two. With the Disney shows I've had, I always find it hard to watch when it's airing because I'm such a tinkerer. I'll always find things I want to change. But there's something really special about sharing that experience in a theatre, so I'm definitely going to try to slip in to see a couple of screens if I can, at least for a moment.
(FR): It's fun from beginning to end, even through the credits with all of the little Easter eggs there.
(TB): I love that Universal is taking a romcom and putting it in theatres. It's not just a superhero or dinosaur movie in theatres. I hope that we can prove that audiences want that, and other studios take some risks and expand the offerings that they're putting out there.
(FR): Your family is in auto racing – is there another racing script in your future?
(TB): I created a series for Disney Channel called Fast Layne that was basically Knight Rider. A teenage girl gets a talking car. That was very much drawing a lot of inspiration from my background in cars and racing. I'm showrunning [the upcoming Disney+ series] Cars: Lightning Racers, which is the continuation of Pixar's Cars. I feel like it's weirdly the perfect Venn diagram of my background in cars and my experience in animation and storytelling. I feel like the luckiest guy, getting to work on that project.
Universal Pictures’ One Night Only opens in cinemas in the US on 7 August and releases on 28 August in the UK.
TRAVIS BRAUN is an Emmy-nominated writer, producer and creator. Braun made history by becoming the first writer to top The Black List, the annual survey of the most-liked screenplays in Hollywood, two years in a row with Bad Boy in 2023 and One Night Only topping the list in 2024. His work has landed him on The Black List in three consecutive years, beginning with Dying for You in 2022. Braun has an overall deal with Disney and is currently showrunning and executive producing Cars: Lightning Racers, for Pixar and Disney Television Animation, which is set to premiere in 2027. Braun is writing two feature projects, Everyday Parenting Tips for Universal Pictures and The In-Claus for Netflix, both produced by Academy Award-winning filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Braun created and executive produced the animated series Pupstruction and T.O.T.S., and created and co-executive produced the live-action comedy Fast Layne for Disney under his deal. In 2016, Braun wrote and produced Doritos Dogs, the winning entry in the Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl competition. The commercial earned the $1 million grand prize and aired during Super Bowl 50. Originally from Texas, Braun currently lives in Los Angeles.
