Trivia / From Justin to Kelly

• Actor-Shared Background: Kelly is a small-town Texas girl with a big voice and a taste for country music. The real-life Kelly Clarkson did in fact work as a cocktail waitress before American Idol.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $12 million. Gross: $4.9 million.
• Completely Different Title: This released in Hungary under the title Beach Love.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Kelly Clarkson has made it clear repeatedly that she did not enjoy her involvement with the film by stating, "Two Words: contractually obligated!" Apparently she begged Simon Fuller to release her from the part of her contract which demanded she appear in the film (to no avail) as she not only knew it was going to do her career no favors but also she felt that, as someone who had never wanted to be an actor, it was wrong of her to take a starring role that could have gone to someone who actually wanted it.
• Creator Backlash:
  • As aforementioned, Kelly Clarkson has made it very clear that she hated being attached to this film, and would've abandoned the production if her hands hadn't been tied. She is embarrassed about being in the film to this very day. Some reports even say that she begged the producers to let her out of her contract during filming.
  • Justin himself didn't have much good things to say about it, calling it "abysmal" in a later interview. However, he said the filming process was great and something he doesn't regret doing.
• Creator Killer: Director Robert Iscove's profile has been considerably low-key thanks to this film.
• Cut Song: "Brighter Star" (a Distant Duet/Crowd Song involving separate choruses of guys and girls) and "From Me to You" (a Song of Solace by Justin). Both are present on the DVD's extended version.
• The Danza: Justin and Kelly playing Justin Bell and Kelly Taylor. Furthermore, their character's surnames belong to Justin and Kelly's respective father and stepfather, Eldrin Bell and Jimmy Taylor.
• Direct to Video: Everywhere outside North America.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Infamously, the reception and box office resulted in the soundtrack never being released. The closest thing it has to an official release was Justin Guarini's first album, which included two of the songs. (Kelly Clarkson's debut album features one of the songs, but as a solo version of what in the film had been a duet with Guarini.) Additionally, a handful of the songs can be found on a couple of Kelly Clarkson fan sites.
• Missing Trailer Scene: In the trailer, Justin says "Hey, you're that girl from the beach!" upon meeting Kelly. In the movie, this was changed to "Hey, we met at the beach, right?"
• Recycled Soundtrack: The musical number "Timeless" appears on Guarini's Self-Titled Album. It also has a Cover Version by Australian singers Tina Arena and Kane Alexander, plus two translated cover versions, in Korean and in Chinese.
• Romance on the Set: stars Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson began dating after filming was completed.
• Star-Derailing Role:
  • Whatever steam Guarini's musical career had after American Idol died with this film, although he had a rather successful run on stage, starring in musicals such as American Idiot, RENT, Chicago, Wicked and Company (most recently, his voice appears on an episode of Blaze and the Monster Machines).
  • Greg Siff (Brandon) was reduced to short films, single-episode TV appearances and video game voice roles.
• Stillborn Franchise: The film was Fox's first effort to produce a series of films centered on the winners of each Idol season. Suffice to say, whatever plans they had were swiftly abandoned after this first effort failed. Exactly what form the subsequent films would have taken remains unknown, though Season 2 runner-up Clay Aiken later joked that he'd have totally been up for being in a romantic comedy with his season's winner, Ruben Studdard.
• Technology Marches On: Eddie's asking whether his room has an internet connection is treated as a ridiculous request that marks him out as a loser, indicating that the script was written at the tail-end of the period when hotel rooms lacked internet access and your only options for getting online while on a vacation generally consisted of internet cafes or kiosks.
• Troubled Production: Fox got into trouble with theaters when they announced the film would be put on home video a short six weeks after release, causing some theater chains to threaten to not screen the film. Fox agreed to postpone the home video release, only for the film's poor box office to cause them move it back to its original date. This resulted in a Consolation World Record of the fastest release of a film from theaters to home media: 29 days. It would hold this record until the release of Trespass (18 days).

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