Lindsay Lohan is heading back to Netflix, this time opposite Henry Golding in a romance built around a mysterious DVD, a search for a stranger and a filmmaker who knows her better than most. Lohan will produce and star in Return to You, while Golding plays the man her character is trying to find. The pairing is enticing, but the surprise reunion may be the one behind the camera: Mark Waters, who directed Lohan in both Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, is directing her again. Deadline first reported the project.
Set in 2008, the film follows a successful but lonely attorney played by Lohan. When she mistakenly receives an emotional DVD recorded by a dying woman for her husband, she sets out to deliver it using only the clues on the disc. Golding, whose romantic lead credentials include Crazy Rich Asians, plays the husband. The premise promises a search with emotional stakes, though Netflix has yet to reveal where that journey will take the characters-or what happens when they meet.
The 2008 setting adds an intriguing wrinkle. A DVD can be misplaced, carried across town and handed to the wrong person in a way a message sent instantly to a phone cannot. It also places the story in a period close to the movies that made Lohan a defining young star, while giving her a distinctly adult role. Will Return to You lean into that nostalgia, or use it to show how far she has moved beyond it? That question may be as appealing to longtime fans as the romance itself.
Waters gives the project another reason to watch closely. He directed Lohan in 2003's Freaky Friday and 2004's Mean Girls, two films still closely associated with her career. He did not return for the Freaky Friday sequel, Freakier Friday, but said in a 2025 interview that he would have liked to be involved and that he and Lohan had discussed finding a reason to work together again. Return to You is that opportunity.
Lohan's producing credit also makes this more than a familiar face returning for another Netflix romance. She previously starred in the streamer's Falling for Christmas, Irish Wish and Our Little Secret. Now she is helping shape a film that pairs a new leading man with one of the directors behind her most enduring hits. Eric Champnella wrote Return to You, and Brad Krevoy is producing alongside Lohan.
The question for the finished movie is whether those ingredients will create something fresh: Golding and Lohan finding a connection through another couple's unfinished story, with Waters guiding an actress he first directed more than two decades ago. Netflix has not announced a release date, and more cast members are still to come. For now, Return to You has given fans two reunions to anticipate-one promised by its plot and one already happening on set.
