‘The Housemaid' is coming to the stage

The Housemaid is heading to the stage, and given the story's track record, it's hard to bet against it.

Lionsgate has announced it is developing a stage adaptation of the psychological thriller, based on Freida McFadden's best-selling novel and the hit film of the same name. 

British production company Melting Pot, led by Simon Friend and Hanna Osmolska, the team behind the stage versions of Life of Pi and Paranormal Activity, will produce, with playwright Bekah Brunstetter, best known for Broadway's The Notebook, writing the script. 

A production timeline has not yet been confirmed.

The move makes considerable commercial sense. 

The film, directed by Paul Feig and starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, quietly became one of the more remarkable box office stories in recent memory, grossing $400 million worldwide on a production budget of just $35 million. 

A sequel, The Housemaid's Secret, is already in the pipeline, with production expected to begin later this year ahead of a planned theatrical release on 17 December 2027.

The stage version will draw on both the novel and the film, which tell broadly the same story, a young woman with a hidden past takes a live-in housekeeping position with a wealthy family whose seemingly perfect life conceals some very dark secrets. 

The endings of the book and film differ slightly, though the core story remains the same.

For Friend, the material is a natural fit for theatre. 

"When I first read The Housemaid, it was exhilarating," he said. 

"What occurred to me is how truly theatrical the story is, not only happening largely in a single, claustrophobic location, but the twisty elements which contemporize what has long worked in potboiler stage thrillers." 

He has spoken of wanting to "heighten its intensity" for live audiences, a logical ambition given that much of the film's appeal came from experiencing its campier moments and jump-scares in a crowd.

Brunstetter is equally enthused. 

"I'm so thrilled to be bringing this gripping, emotional, strange, and even funny story to the stage," she said. 

"I'm extremely excited to dig into The Housemaid's incredibly universal themes of jealousy, the pain of desire, and the traumas that connect us."

The Housemaid joins a growing slate of Lionsgate properties making the leap from screen to stage. 

Productions based on Dirty Dancing, La La Land and Wonder are all in development, while a stage version of The Hunger Games is currently running on London's West End. 

It is, by any measure, an ambitious expansion, and The Housemaid, with its built-in audience and proven commercial appeal, looks like one of the stronger bets in the bunch.