In 2017, he produced the romantic comedy "The Big Sick". The film stars Kumail Nanjiani as himself, a stand-up comedian who comes from a Muslim Pakistani background and falls in love with an American woman, based on Nanjiani's real-life wife Emily V. Gordon. Produced on a budget of $5 million, it grossed $52.3 million worldwide. A "New York Times" review described the movie as "a joyous, generous-hearted romantic comedy that, even as it veers into difficult terrain, insists that we just need to keep on laughing" while revitalizing "the often moribund romantic comedy subgenre with a true story of love, death and the everyday comedy of being a 21st-century American". In 2018, the film was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of best Original Screenplay. Additionally it won Best Comedy at the Critics' Choice Awards and received an AFI Movies of the Year Award from the American Film Institute. The film also received two Screen Actors Guild nominations and a NAACP Image Award nomination. Apatow was nominated for the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures award by the Producers Guild of America, alongside producing partner Barry Mendel.