Cole Sprouse is in a new movie, a romantic drama of sorts, called Five Feet Apart. It has a lot of trendy goodness going for it: The movie, directed by Jane the Virgin's Justin Baldoni, follows two teens who fall in love but can't be together because of a chronic illness. Truly ill-fated lovers, right? The trailer for Five Feet Apart dropped Friday, providing an in-depth look to the first movie Cole Sprouse has done in years. It also revealed that, erm, Five Feet Apart is very similar to a season 7 episode of Grey's Anatomy.
In Five Feet Apart, Stella (Haley Lu Richardson) and Will (Sprouse) meet at the hospital, where they're both receiving treatment for cystic fibrosis. The trouble is, cystic fibrosis patients aren't allowed to get closer than five feet to one another, lest they trade infections. (Lung infections found in patients with CF are unique and often immune to treatment. Thus, if one infection travels to another patient, the results could be lethal.) Stella and Will strike up a friendship, despite their required distance, and may even find romance. It's worth noting that this plot is practically a teen movie archetype: We had Bubble Boy, then we had Everything, Everything, in which a girl (Amandla Stenberg) couldn't step outside, and later Midnight Sun, in which Bella Thorne played a girl allergic to the sun. If we're really getting technical, then Mars movie The Space Between Us counts, too.
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The CF case is particularly brutal, as contact only between two people with the disease is dangerous. In 2015, CNN profiled two teen patients who met over Facebook and eventually married. A season 7 episode of Grey's Anatomy also delved into this issue, as two patients admitted to the hospital revealed to the doctors that they were both victims of CF. That episode ended with the couple splitting — one received a new set of lungs and the other left.
So... will Will and Stella make the same decision? Five Feet Apart arrives in Canadian theatres March 2019.