Screwball comedy in the context of "Hercules (1997 film)"

Romantic comedy (commonly shortened to romcom or rom-com) is a sub-genre of comedy and romance fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how love is able to surmount all obstacles. Romantic comedy evolved from Ancient Greek comedy, medieval romance, and 18th-century Restoration comedy, later developing into sub-genres like screwball comedies, career woman comedies, and 1950s sex comedies in Hollywood.

A common convention in romantic comedies is the "meet-cute", a humorous or unexpected encounter that creates initial tension and sets up the romantic storyline.

High Society is a 1956 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Charles Walters and starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra. The film was produced by Sol C. Siegel for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and shot in VistaVision and Technicolor, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter.

The film is a musical remake of the 1940 screwball comedy film The Philadelphia Story, which was based on the 1939 play The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry. High Society's screenplay was written by John Patrick and involves a successful popular jazz musician (Crosby) who tries to win back the affections of his ex-wife (Kelly), who is preparing to marry another man. The cast also features Celeste Holm, John Lund, and Louis Calhern, in his final film, with a musical contribution by Louis Armstrong. The film was Kelly's last professional appearance before she married Prince Rainier III and became Princess consort of Monaco.

RKO Pictures, commonly known as simply RKO, is an American film, television and stage production company owned by Concord. In its original incarnation, as RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., it was one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA executive David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name (an initialism of Radio-Keith-Orpheum). Two years later, another Kennedy concern, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum.

RKO has long been renowned for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid- to late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had their first major successes at the studio. Cary Grant was a mainstay for years, with credits including touchstones of the screwball comedy genre with which RKO was identified. The work of producer Val Lewton's low-budget horror unit and RKO's many ventures into the field now known as film noir have been acclaimed, largely after the fact, by film critics and historians. The studio produced two of the most famous films in motion picture history: King Kong and producer/director/star Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. RKO was also responsible for notable coproductions such as It's a Wonderful Life and Notorious, and it distributed many celebrated films by animation pioneer Walt Disney and leading independent producer Samuel Goldwyn. Though it often could not compete financially for top star and director contracts, RKO's below-the-line personnel were among the finest, including composer Max Steiner, cinematographers Nicholas Musuraca and Gregg Toland, and designer Van Nest Polglase.

The Hudsucker Proxy is a 1994 screwball comedy film co-written, produced, and directed by the Coen brothers. Sam Raimi co-wrote the script and served as second unit director. The film stars Tim Robbins as a naïve but ambitious business school graduate who is installed as president of a manufacturing company, Jennifer Jason Leigh as a newspaper reporter, and Paul Newman as a company director who hires the graduate as part of a stock scam.

The script was finished in 1985, but production did not start until 1991, when Joel Silver acquired the script for Silver Pictures. Warner Bros. subsequently agreed to distribute the film, with further financing from PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and Working Title Films. Filming at Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, lasted from November 1992 to March 1993. The New York City scale model set was designed by Michael J. McAlister and Mark Stetson, with further effects provided by The Computer Film Company.

Monkey Business is a 1952 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn and Marilyn Monroe. To avoid confusion with the unrelated 1931 Marx Brothers film of the same name, the film is sometimes billed as Howard Hawks' Monkey Business.