The Safe Haven trailer: How many times can Nicholas Sparks rewrite the same story?

Over the past 13 years, eight of the bestselling author's novels have been adapted into suspiciously similar Hollywood films

Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough
(Image credit: Facebook/Safe Haven Movie)

No one could be blamed for feeling like she'd seen the new trailer for Safe Haven — a movie, coming in early 2013, that's based on Nicholas Sparks' novel of the same name — before. After all, Safe Haven's trailer seems to have been expressly designed to look and sound exactly like every other Nicholas Sparks adaptation ever released. (Watch the trailer below.) With no less than seven other Hollywood adaptations of Sparks' novels since 1999, the bestselling author officially "has his formula down pat," says Madeleine Davies at Jezebel: "Sad hot white lady meets sad hot white dude. Someone is dead. Someone dies. They fall in love in a quaint small town. They sit in a canoe." The Week has previously explained how anyone can make a Nicholas Sparks film in just six easy steps, but with Safe Haven on the way, it's time to look at the life and work of the man who codified the modern Hollywood weepie. Has Nicholas Sparks really built his entire career on a single story? Judge for yourself with this video retrospective:

1. Message in a Bottle (1999)

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