The Housemaid‘s release date has been changed. The upcoming thriller was directed by Paul Feig (A Simple Favor, Bridesmaids) and is based on the 2022 novel of the same name by Freida McFadden, which spent five dozen weeks on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list.
The upcoming The Housemaid follows Millie (Sydney Sweeney), a young woman with a dark past who gets a job as a housemaid for the Winchester family, which includes married couple Nina (Amanda Seyfried) and Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and their daughter Cecelia (Indiana Elle). She soon discovers that the Winchesters hide sinister secrets of their own.
Per ᴅᴇᴀᴅline, The Housemaid has moved its release date from Christmas Day to December 19. This places its debut on the weekend before Christmas, which is the same frame in which Sweeney’s hit rom-com Anyone But You premiered in 2023.
What This Means For The Housemaid
By moving its debut to December 19, the people behind The Housemaid are putting it in the middle of a compeтιтive theatrical battlefield. It will debut opposite the upcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash, a sequel which follows two of the Top 3 highest-grossing movies of all time and seems certain to debut at No. 1 during the weekend before Christmas.
Also debuting on December 19 are The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants and the Bradley Cooper dramedy Is This Thing On?.
However, this release date could benefit The Housemaid in the long run. ᴅᴇᴀᴅline reports that the reason for it being moved forward is the fact that the distributor, Lionsgate, is confident in the Sydney Sweeney movie and wants to give it the chance to build word of mouth with the 18-24 demographic ahead of Christmas.
A similar approach worked for 2023’s Anyone But You. Although the movie debuted at No. 5 over the long Christmas weekend with $6 million, it became a word-of-mouth smash, eventually climbing to a worldwide gross of $220.3 million against a reported budget of just $25 million.
Our Take On The New Release Date For The Housemaid
A spectacular performance for The Housemaid could be exactly what Sydney Sweeney needs after her previous two theatrical releases, the crime movie Americana and the survival thriller Eden, have had underwhelming performances at the box office over the past month.
Additionally, The Housemaid could potentially cement Sydney Sweeney as a Christmas season star, allowing future December releases featuring the actor to thrive. There is precedent for this kind of success, as Dakota Johnson had a run of Valentine’s Day weekend successes with the Fifty Shades of Grey movies in 2015, 2017, and 2018 and How to Be Single in 2016.
