How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
The love fern, the scrapbook of future children, the Knicks game she ruins and the yellow dress. Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey each ran a bet on the other for ten days in the 2003 rom-com that critics shrugged at and audiences graded A-minus.
The title came from a picture book of dating don'ts by Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long; the dating mistakes are the book's, the story and characters were invented for the film. Gwyneth Paltrow and director Mike Newell were attached first, but producer Lynda Obst could not pin Newell to a date, so Donald Petrie directed Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey from a script by Kristen Buckley, Brian Regan and Burr Steers. Paramount released it on February 7, 2003.
Andie Anderson writes how-to columns for a women's magazine called Composure and wants to write about something serious. After her friend Michelle's latest breakup she pitches "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days": date a man and drive him off using only the classic mistakes women make. Across town, ad executive Ben Barry, stuck on beer and sports accounts, bets his boss he can make any woman fall in love with him by the company ball in ten days to win a diamond campaign, and two rivals who overheard Andie's pitch choose her as the target. What follows is the catalogue: she makes him leave a Knicks game in its final moments, assembles a scrapbook of their future children, names his penis Princess Sophia, fills his apartment with stuffed animals, pink and a puppy that is not housebroken, and presents him with a love fern. He survives a staged couples-therapy session with Michelle as the therapist and takes her to meet his family on Staten Island, where the fake relationship quietly becomes a real one until both schemes are exposed on stage at the ball. She quits and heads for a job interview in Washington; he chases her taxi.
The butter-yellow backless gown Hudson wears to the ball was made by Carolina Herrera with the film's costume designer, built around a yellow diamond necklace designed by Harry Winston and worth six million dollars, named in the film the Isadora after Isadora Duncan; the dress has become one of cinema's recognizable costumes. The soundtrack ran from Keith Urban's "Somebody Like You" to Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" and Al Green's "Let's Stay Together."
It opened to $23.8 million and finished at $177.5 million worldwide, with 3.79 million home-video copies sold by that December. Critics were lukewarm: Rotten Tomatoes has it at 42 percent, its consensus crediting the stars' charm while faulting the silly premise and predictable script, but CinemaScore audiences gave it an A-minus. A sequel was reported to be in development in August 2026.
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