Hayley Kiyoko’s ‘Girls Like Girls’ Finally Gets a Streaming Release Date

Hayley Kiyoko has spent more than a decade building out the world of ‘Girls Like Girls,’ starting with a viral 2015 music video that became something of a coming-out anthem for a generation of queer fans. That single song eventually grew into a bestselling novel, and this year, it finally reached its most ambitious form yet as a feature film that Kiyoko wrote, directed, and scored herself.

The movie hit theaters back in June, arriving during Pride Month to particularly meaningful timing given the song’s own history. Set in 2006, the coming-of-age story follows Coley, a grieving teenager who moves to a small Oregon town to live with her estranged father, played by Zach Braff, and finds herself falling for a charismatic girl named Sonya over the course of one transformative summer.

Now, fans who missed the film during its theatrical run will finally get another chance to see it, with ‘Girls Like Girls’ officially set to begin streaming exclusively on Peacock starting August 14. The film earned over $2.7 million at the domestic box office during its run and picked up strong reviews along the way, landing an 86 percent Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.

That kind of reception feels especially significant given how personal the project is for Kiyoko. Reflecting on what the film means to her, she described it as a love letter to her own younger self, adding that seeing a story like this on the big screen as a teenager would have profoundly shaped her journey of self-discovery, according to Refinery29.

The road to getting ‘Girls Like Girls’ onto screens wasn’t a quick one. Kiyoko has spoken about the project’s long, stop-and-start development, with the original song evolving into a novel in 2023 before finally becoming a film nearly ten years after its initial release, a process she’s described as one of the most personally fulfilling creative journeys of her career.

That long gestation period also gave Kiyoko room to build out a companion soundtrack featuring collaborators with their own personal ties to the song’s legacy, including Gigi Perez, Joy Oladokun, Tegan and Sara, Young Miko, and Chelsea Cutler. Perez, who contributed to the album, has credited Kiyoko as a genuine pioneer within queer music, someone who built her career without the kind of support system many artists rely on.

The film’s move to Peacock follows a fairly standard pipeline for Focus Features releases, which typically make their way to streaming within a few months of their theatrical debut. Other recent titles from the studio, including ‘Hamnet’ and ‘Bugonia,’ have followed similar paths onto major platforms after their own theatrical runs concluded.

With its arrival on Peacock, ‘Girls Like Girls’ joins a growing slate of queer coming-of-age stories finding a second life on streaming, giving audiences who couldn’t catch it in theaters an easy way to experience Kiyoko’s decade-long passion project. For a film so deeply rooted in one artist’s personal history, its expanded streaming availability feels like a fitting next chapter in the story’s ongoing evolution.