New hunk for Del. writer after Efron, Pattinson

After penning a trilogy of romantic dramas starring heartthrobs like Zac Efron, Robert Pattinson and James Marsden, you might think screenwriter Will Fetters is the ideal companion.

The Brandywine Hundred native sure knows how to write a lead male character brimming with love, caring and romance.

In short, he creates the man every woman wants.

But even after a string of "chick flicks" over the past four years -- Pattinson's "Remember Me," Efron's "The Lucky One" and the new Marsden-led "The Best of Me" -- Fetters admits he's not always the idealized version of a man like his characters.

"I'm getting better about that. I like to think there's been some osmosis from the fictional people I've worked with," he says from his Los Angeles home earlier this week, where he lives with his wife, Amanda. "I'm a thoughtful person and we've always had a good, open emotional relationship, but as for the grand romantic gestures -- that I've had to learn.

"You hear enough jokes at dinner about how you're not like these guys that you fictionalize and you start to figure it out a little bit."

With a couple of releases under his belt, this whole Hollywood thing isn't old hat just yet for Fetters, 33. This week has been exciting, just like all the others.

"I hope I never get so jaded that seeing them put up billboards for a thing you worked really hard on is anything other than amazing," says Fetters, who still visits Delaware to see his family. "It should always be a very cool experience."

During his time out West, Fetters befriended veteran Hollywood producer Denise Di Novi, who headed Tim Burton Productions in the '90s and now has her own production company, Di Novi Pictures.

Di Novi produced 2012's "The Lucky One," which Fetters wrote the screenplay for, adapting the Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name. So when "The Best of Me," another Sparks novel, needed additional work after screenwriter J. Mills Goodloe's run on the project, Di Novi called Fetters.

Though he was ready to move on from the genre, Fetters happily took the job. After all, she vouched for him early in his young Hollywood career and the two have become good friends.

"The reality of being a screenwriter in Hollywood is that when you first start out, you have to take the jobs that you can get. I just kind of became known to some degree as a specialist in romantic drama," he says. "I'm kind of past that -- not that I'm better than that. I just want to do other things in my career.

"I grew up watching Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. I don't need to only write violent and course dialog, but at the same time, I would like to take a crack at it. It's a cool opportunity to work in this industry and I want to make the most of it."

Unlike his first two films, Fetters never made it to the set or table read of "The Best of Me," so his first meeting with Marsden came at the premiere in Los Angeles last week.

Even after already meeting pretty boys like Efron, 26, and Pattinson, 28, Fetters had to give Marsden, 41, credit for being one handsome dude.

"I'll be honest, he's the first leading man I met that made me feel worse about myself. I was left thinking, 'I need to eat salads the rest of the week and use eye cream for these bags,'" he jokes. "He looks younger than me."

While all three of Fetters' films have received generally negative reviews, his movies have a streak of success at the box office.

"Remember Me," which cost $16 million to make, made $56 million worldwide and "The Lucky One," which had a $25 million budget, took in nearly $100 million globally, according to the Los Angeles Times and Box Office Mojo.

"Remember Me" had a particularly bumpy ride with some film critics and film-goers due to its twist ending involving 9/11, to which Fetters defended himself in the press.

With time to reflect on the film's ending, Fetters says he still believes his intentions were pure writing the film and processing the emotion of the terrorist attack, which happened when he was 20. It was a personal script that he wrote years before it was picked up and turned into a big Hollywood movie -- the first film for Pattinson since the first two "Twilight" movies.

"I learned not to take critical reaction personally, but you shouldn't turn it off. You do learn from it," he says. "Critics aren't internet trolls. They are thoughtful people who put a lot of time into it and give their honest reactions."

He says he was even thinking of that film at the premiere of "The Best of Me" earlier this month, flashing back to when he was in Manhattan at the "Remember Me" launch, where he admits he was a "total mess" for his first Hollywood premiere.

"Part of it was that twist ending," he says. "I was thinking, 'Oh my God. I'm in New York City going to the Plaza Hotel with a bunch of New Yorkers.' It was a surreal experience."

Fetters' wish of breaking free from the gooey love stories could be in in the near future. He is waiting to hear back from a film studio on a new crime drama he wrote over the past year as he watched his 14-month-old son Whitman Chase grow into toddlerhood.

He has also adapted Norman Ollestad's bestselling book "Crazy For The Storm: A Memoir Of Survival," which he hopes will get made next year. Two-time Academy Award winner Sean Penn is attached to direct the film, which has been on the verge of production for nearly two years.

"Sean actually grew up with the people that the movie is about -- the surf community at Topanga Beach in Malibu, Calif.," says Fetters, who met with Penn at his home a few times about the film. "He's so perfect for this. It's been so hard to wait for it."

-- Ryan Cormier, The News Journal. Facebook: @ryancormier. Twitter: @ryancormier. Instagram: @ryancormier.