The adaptation of Elle Kennedy's bestselling book series premieres May 13 on Prime Video
NEED TO KNOW
- Elle Kennedy’s bestselling book series, Off Campus, is being adapted into a TV show on Prime Video
- Season 1 will follow the plot of the first book, The Deal, and star Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli as Hannah and Garrett
- Off Campus premieres May 13 on Prime Video
One of BookTok's most anticipated page-to-screen adaptations is almost here.
On Thursday, March 19, Prime Video released the first teaser for the upcoming Off Campus series, adapted from Elle Kennedy's bestselling book series.
The series will premiere in full on May 13 and sees the first book in Kennedy's series, The Deal, come to life onscreen.
Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli star as quiet songwriter Hannah and all-star hockey athlete Garrett, respectively, as their "sexy and fun 'opposites attract' romance" unfolds.
Per the official logline, the show is described as a "college soap" that "follows an elite ice hockey team, and the women in their lives, as they grapple with love, heartbreak and self-discovery — forging deep friendships and enduring bonds while navigating the complexities that come with transitioning into adulthood."
Off Campus also stars Mika Abdalla as Allie, and Josh Heuston as Justin, Hannah's other romantic interest. The Briar U hockey team is rounded out by Antonio Cipriano as John Logan, Jalen Thomas Brooks as John Tucker, and Stephen Kalyn as Dean Di Laurentis.
Credit: Liane Hentscher/ Prime
In the teaser, Hannah is at work cleaning the hockey team's locker room when she accidentally catches Garrett naked in the shower. "You looking for someone?" he asks her with a smirk, and she runs off hastily after being caught ogling.
The teaser also shows Garrett and Hannah in class together, as he spies a good grade on her paper, kicking off the tutoring agreement they enter
Creator and co-showrunner Louisa Levy told Teen Vogue that fans of the book series will be satisfied with how Hannah and Garrett's story unfolds in the show, and she teased that her team "scoured the books" and "did a lot of work to try to fold in as many of those Easter eggs as possible" about the other books.
“Some of them are real moments, but maybe they don’t take place in the order of the books. So I would say look out for the similarities that might not come the way you expect,” she said.
Kennedy also "gave us her blessing to play with these characters," Levy said, noting that the author, who is credited as a producer, "wasn’t in the writers’ room, but she read all the scripts and watched all the cuts."
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Credit: Liane Hentscher/ Prime
Levy told the outlet that "sparks flew" between Bright and Cameli during their "steamy" chemistry read, and they both became the obvious choices for the roles.
“It’s really important to us to honor how steamy and spicy those books are, but it’s a while in that first book before Hannah and Garrett have any [intimacy],” she said. “We wanted to show the book fans from jump that we were going to honor that, even though ironically it’s kind of a departure from the book to show them that. And [for] anyone who wasn’t a book fan, we wanted to show them that this show is going to go there. It’s not a teenage romance. This is a college-age romance.”
Credit: Liane Hentscher/ Prime
Cameli told the outlet that "nothing we do on the show in sex is gratuitous, so the conversations we had around the sex scenes were just as varied and specific as they were about Thanksgiving or they were about sitting next to each other in class.”
“The real reason we're showing that level of intimacy in the show is to further the romance story and to give you another glimpse behind the curtain of who these people are," he said.
Off Campus premieres May 13 on Prime Video.
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