EXCLUSIVE: Following the box office success of Sony’s It Ends With Us, Brandon Sklenar has found his next high-profile adaptation to star in. Sources tell Deadline that he is set to join Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried in the Lionsgate adaptation of The Housemaid. Paul Feig is set to direct the Hidden Pictures/ Feigco Entertainment production, with Rebecca Sonnenshine adapting Freida McFadden’s novel.
In the film, Sweeney will play Millie, a struggling woman who is relieved to get a fresh start as a housemaid to Nina (Seyfried) and Andrew (Sklenar), an upscale, wealthy couple. She soon learns that the family’s secrets are far more dangerous than her own.
Hidden Pictures’ Todd Lieberman will produce. Carly Kleinbart Elter will oversee the project for Hidden Pictures. Feigco’s Feig and Laura Fischer are also producing. Sweeney and Seyfried serve as executive producers alongside Alex Young and McFadden.
The novel has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year — 75 weeks and counting — and on the Amazon bestsellers list for 98 weeks and counting. It also has a record-breaking half-billion pages read on Kindle and is the No. 2 most-read title for Kindle’s 10th anniversary behind only the Harry Potter series. It has sold more than 3.6 million copies in English and has been translated into 40 languages.
Chelsea Kujawa and Erin Jones-Wesley are overseeing the movie for Lionsgate. Robert Melnik negotiated the deals for the studio.
Sklenar’s breakout role came playing Spencer Dutton in the Yellowstone spinoff 1923 opposite Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. The role as the dashing hunter caught the eye of every exec in town, especially Sony, which quickly cast him as Atlas in its adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us.
That film became of the big hits of the summer, grossing more than $340 million at worldwide box office.
Sklenar can next be seen starring in Christopher Landon’s Drop opposite Meghann Fahy, which debuts in spring 2025. He is represented by WME, Jay Glazer at Neon Kite, and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson & Christopher.