Do three boys and one girl add up to the new "Four Weddings"? The brains behind Britain's latest (and longest-titled) rom-com are banking on it...

Genre-defining author Raymond Chandler came up with some astute advice that Tarantino's fond of quoting. "If you're stuck for something to happen," he said, "have someone come through the door with a gun." It's an idea that writer Peter Morgan and director Nick Hamm have taken to heart.

They've turned the romantic comedy world of wine bars, weddings and funerals into a complex, guess-again story where someone - usually the person you least expect - is constantly coming through the door, clutching a bouquet or a ring instead of a firearm.

Martha - Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence is a rom-com of coincidence that features a cast of relative unknowns headed by Monica Potter and Joseph Fiennes, Ralph's younger brother. The tale of three friends, who all independently meet and fall in love with the same girl is the one that Channel Four Films hope will be this year's big date movie, and also marks distributor Film Four's biggest release since Trainspotting. Public reaction to date has been overwhelmingly positive, with test-screen audiences of all ages and on both sides of the Atlantic going all wobbly-kneed over it.

The pic's riding high on a wave of enthusiasm that's carried it along from the very beginning. Peter Morgan's sharp script sparked off a bidding war among studios and allowed the movie to be pre-sold to every territory worldwide before a foot of film had even been shot. The Four Wedding comparisons are inevitable, with the spirit of Hugh Grant represented by a loose-shirted, hunky English trio of Joe Fiennes, Rufus Sewell and Tom Hollander. A tourist-friendly, summery fairytale Londonscape reinforces the worldwide image of the city, while re-heated country-rock band Texas supply the radio-grabbing soundtrack. Most importantly they've got a beautiful, charismatic and very blonde leading lady in Monica Potter, who surfaced briefly as Nic Cage's wife in last summer's Con Air.

Find the lady
Martha Meet... director Nick Hamm is musing about his hunt for the film's eponymous love interest. "I was looking for someone who would appeal to men and women, someone who would be sexy enough for the men but not alienate the women. There's an element of romantic comedy where you have to discover someone new, and I felt almost immediately that Monica was someone who could hold a movie all the way through. She has that freshness, that humour, and is a bloody good actor on top of that. The guys were cast afterwards. There are a very few young British film stars, so we have to invent our own."

Hamm returned from the LA auditions with test films of Potter and a long list of actresses keen to play Martha that included, among others, Nicole Kidman and the female cast of Friends. David Aukin, the then head of Film Four, opted for Potter over the A-list. "This would never have happened with a Hollywood studio," says Hamm. "And the great thing about David Aukin was that he allowed us to choose an unknown."

At this time, Potter was following the mythic pattern established by the first Hollywood diner waitress whisked to flattering stardom - struggling. The 26-year-old actress was living in LA with two kids and a construction worker husband, modelling for clothes catalogues, failing to land parts in soaps and attending a thousand lipservice auditions for roles which already had 'names' attached. Clearly time for a lucky break.

"I'd no idea there were so many actors interested in Martha," Potter says. "I've prayed for a part like this for a long time - the script was so sharp and funny. It's totally based on coincidence, but you never stop and say, 'Oh no, that's unbelievable,' because the characters are so grounded. Fate is a really big part of my life, so I could really connect with Martha. She's a free spirit and that's a gift."

New Romantics
Peter Morgan is now working with The Full Monty's Peter Cattaneo on a full-length treatment of his Oscar-nominated short Dear Rosie, thanks to the success of that and his script for Martha Meet... He's still clutching his Concorde ticket, having just returned from dinner with Sigourney Weaver in New York (where she'd agreed to star as Rosie). Morgan and Hamm started out on television rom-coms - cutting their TV teeth with Dancing Queen, which starred Rik Mayall, and Helena Bonham Carter as a stripper - but are now becoming specialists in that most difficult of film genres. It pains the writer to admit it, but he acknowledges the debt owed to Four Weddings And A Funeral.

"I'd this idea for years about three friends coincidentally meeting the same girl and everyone told me that I'd have to set it in America to get any interest," says Morgan. "Then Four Weddings came out and people started bidding for the script because they saw you could make a romantic comedy and set it in London. Post-Four Weddings, people began to sit up and take notice. There was no tradition of British romantic comedy written before then."

The story of a beautiful American girl who wanders into the lives of three friends comes, oddly enough, from Morgan's own experiences. "For a while, the circumstances of my life stank and I just went for it and took a year out, away from home, away from everything," he says. "For the first nine months, I thought I might never write again, then I realised I was free of everything and I wrote about Martha, who chucks everything in and decides to change her life with a plane ticket. It's all about examining the contents of your life and re-evalutating them. Each of the three men she meets could do with a serious overhaul of their lives, and she basically asks them if they have the guts to do it. The film's got to be serious enough to make you believe in them and ridiculous enough for it to be funny. It's about turning a corner and meeting somebody who changes your life."

Martha Meet... producer Grainne Marmion has her own way of describing the film. "Some films you take your date to and you might enjoy it and go home," she says. "Then there are the films where you go for a pizza afterwards. And then there are the films where you get a pizza and get laid. This might just be one of them."

Nobody can predict the eventual commerciality of a film. Marmion admits that there have been too many duff "Four Wedding" movies, and Hamm concedes that "the worst thing in the world is a bad romantic comedy - you cringe in your seat or walk out." But get the pizza ordered anyway. Just in case.

Martha's Day

The marketing minds behind Martha Meet... have sighted their target audiences. Widows. Football widows. Messrs Shearer, Seaman and Gascoigne, the success of this summer's British cinema - as well as soccer - could lie at your feet.

For the new rom-com's promotional campaign is to be aimed at female cinemagoers in the hope that they'll drag their partners away from Des and Jimmy, and straight into the arms of Martha. Caroline Henshaw, head of marketing at Film Four explains: "We hope the film will be the football widow's alternative enter-tainment. Because of the World Cup, there's a clear field at the cinemas. We'll be screening advance previews all over the country because we need good word-of-mouth - nobody knows the cast."

It's a campaign Film Four are tackling with serious intent: 20th Century Fox's The Full Monty deprived Four Weddings And A Funeral of its status as the most successful British film ever. Thus the team behind Mart-ha Meet... are working harder than ever to push it. Never before has a British independent film opened with a 160-print release that covers the entire Odeon chain. Although it's small fare compared to the three or four thousand USA print-openings of Starship Troopers or Alien: Resurrection, it's still a big run for the UK, and shows the confidence of the distributors in the film.

Proposed tie-ins mean you won't be able to send flowers or book a flight to America this summer without encountering the smiling face of Monica Potter as Martha. There are planned link-ups with a clothes chain, a possible promotion with Interflora and an American airline offering £99, two-for-one fares to New York. The latter deal mirrors the movie, where Martha leaves a life of drudgery in the US with the "cheapest ticket to anywhere," which happens to be a $99 flight to London.

A film's success dependent on how long it takes England and Scotland to be knocked out of France '98? Quite possibly.