Millie’s Back. And She’s Walking Straight Into That Room.
You know how some movies just get under your skin in a way you weren’t entirely prepared for? That’s what “The Housemaid” did last December. It wasn’t supposed to be the film everyone was talking about. It opened the same weekend as Avatar: Fire & Ash, for heaven’s sake. And yet there it was, quietly terrifying audiences, racking up nearly $400 million worldwide on a $35 million budget, and making Sydney Sweeney a bona fide movie star in the process. Now, barely three months later, the sequel has a date, a new cast member, and the audacity to open against both the Avengers and Middle-earth at the same time.
We’ll get to that particular act of studio bravado in a moment.
First, the news. Lionsgate confirmed on Monday that “The Housemaid’s Secret” will open in wide theatrical release on December 17, 2027. Same holiday corridor as the first film. Same counterprogramming instinct. Same Millie. And joining her this time, in what is genuinely one of the more exciting casting announcements in recent memory, is Kirsten Dunst.
Think about that pairing for a second. Dunst, who has spent a career making audiences feel vaguely unsettled in the most compelling way possible, going scene for scene with Sweeney in a McFadden psychological thriller. There’s something almost too good about it. The kind of casting that makes you trust a sequel before you’ve seen a single frame.
Paul Feig is back in the director’s chair, and Rebecca Sonnenshine returns to write the screenplay, adapting the second novel in Freida McFadden’s bestselling trilogy. Michele Morrone also reprises his role as Enzo. That continuity matters more than it gets credit for. Studios have a habit of treating sequels like renovations, pulling in new writers, new directors, swapping out the original energy for something glossier and less interesting. Lionsgate didn’t do that here, and that alone is a good sign.
The plot picks up with Millie taking a new housekeeping position, this time for a family where she is forbidden from ever seeing the wife behind a locked door, only to discover that whatever is being hidden there is far darker than anything from her own troubled past. Which, given what we know about Millie’s past, is saying something. McFadden has a gift for this particular brand of dread, the domestic thriller that starts as unsettling and quietly accelerates into something you can’t look away from. The source material for this one is just as sharply constructed as the first.
Truth is, the first film’s success surprised a lot of people, though it probably shouldn’t have. It opened to $19 million domestically, went on to earn $126.4 million in North America, and finished with a $397.5 million global total, all while competing against Avatar: Fire & Ash’s $89 million opening weekend. That’s not counterprogramming. That’s counterprogramming that won. Audiences, it turns out, were hungry for something that wasn’t a sequel to a franchise they’d already seen seventeen installments of. Something adult-oriented, genuinely tense, slightly trashy in the best possible way.
And now the sequel is walking directly into an even bigger fight.
“The Housemaid’s Secret” is currently slated to open on the exact same date as both “Avengers: Secret Wars” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.” Two of the most anticipated films of the next two years, both on December 17, 2027. It reads like a scheduling mistake until you remember that Lionsgate has already proven these films can hold their own against blockbuster tentpoles. The first film proved there’s an audience that will actively choose a psychological thriller over superheroes and CGI spectacle. Whether that holds against the combined weight of the MCU’s Multiverse endgame and a Tolkien revival is the genuinely interesting question.
One thing still hanging in the air: Amanda Seyfried. Her character, Nina, doesn’t exist in the second book, which complicates things considerably. Seyfried has said publicly that she’s determined to find a way back, and apparently Feig, the studio, and McFadden are all receptive to making it work somehow. She was the heartbeat of the original in a lot of ways, unpredictable and magnetic in equal measure. The sequel can absolutely function without her. It would just be noticeably better with her.
For what it’s worth, Lionsgate has optioned the entire McFadden trilogy plus an additional short story, and there are clearly plans for more films beyond this one. Feig has talked openly about wanting to see the whole series through. There are three and a half books in the franchise. A novella sitting between the second and third novels that could be expanded. The infrastructure for a real, sustained thriller franchise is there, which isn’t something you could have said about most original R-rated films two years ago.
For now, December 2027 feels both far away and not far enough. Millie has a new employer. A new locked door. And Kirsten Dunst somewhere in the mix, which means absolutely nothing good is waiting on the other side of it.
Honestly, cannot wait.
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Sana has been covering film, fame, and everything in between for over a decade. From red carpets to rehab rumors, she brings nuance, wit, and an insider’s edge to every story. When she’s not reporting, she’s probably watching Koffee With Karan reruns or doom-scrolling celebrity IG feeds.
