Little Italy (2018 film)  Little Italy is a 2018 Canadian-American romantic comedy film directed by Donald Petrie, with a screenplay by Steve Galluccio and Vinay Virmani from a story by Virmani. The film stars Emma Roberts, Hayden Christensen, Alyssa Milano, Adam Ferrara, Gary Basaraba, Linda Kash, Andrew Phung, Cristina Rosato, Danny Aiello and Andrea Martin. The film features Aiello's final film appearance before his death in 2019. Nikki and Leo both grow up in Toronto's Little Italy neighborhood, where their families are running a pizza business together. However, the verbal conflict between Nikki's father Sal and Leo's father Vince has caused their pizza business to deteriorate, thus resulting in them respectively founding their own pizza businesses next door to each other, which in turn results in Nikki leaving the family to go to London to study cooking. However, Chef Corinne temporarily gives Nikki a break for two weeks to give time for her to work on a cooking menu for the upcoming cooking exhibit. Upon arriving home in Toronto, Nikki meets Leo at the bar and they drunkenly play soccer in a midst of the thunderstorm. The next day, she is welcomed by her family on her arrival. Vince, Leo and other crew are later arrested for lacing the pizza with marijuana during the party but they are released shortly after. Leo later forms a relationship with Nikki and they sleep together after riding around the town, reliving their childhood memories. Nikki receives a call from Corinne, saying that she wants a cooking menu, otherwise she will promote another chef. Struggling, Nikki expresses her regrets to Leo and confronts him for focusing on soccer instead of the pizza business. Meanwhile, their respective grandparents, Franca and Carlo, become engaged (due to the fact that they have been in love with each other for years and were never rivals from the start). Franca finally agrees to marry Carlo despite a promise from her late husband not to remarry. Franca and Carlo arrange a dinner for the families. During the dinner Franca and Carlo announce their engagement, causing Sal and Vince to begin exchanging insults. Vince decides to enter a pizza competition against Sal saying that whoever loses will "go out" from "Little Italy". When the two realize that they are banned from the competition because of a fallout during a previous competition, they decide to have Nikki and Leo enter the competition. Nikki refuses to compete, and she and Leo start arguing about who let who win in soccer when they were kids.