Sydney Sweeney’s R-Rated Thriller Is Officially One of the Biggest Streaming Hits in the World

For better or for worse, Sydney Sweeney‘s popularity continues to rise, with her many movie appearances becoming streaming sensations. Late next year, one of her most popular films will release a sequel sure to dominate at the box office. The Housemaid’s Secret, an adaptation of Freida McFadden‘s sequel novel of the same name, is slated for a December 17, 2027, release, with Sweeney reprising her role as Millie Calloway.

Directed by Paul Feig and written by Rebecca Sonnenshine, The Housemaid’s Secret will see Michele Morrone also return as Enzo, with several famous names added to the cast, including Paul Anthony Kelly, Kirsten Dunst, and The Hunting Wives favorite Brittany Snow. Lionsgate will be hoping for similar success for the sequel to last year’s surprise smash hit, The Housemaid. The movie earned $400 million in global box office revenue against a reported production budget of just $35 million, outperforming several of the biggest titles of late 2025.

A year later, The Housemaid is still proving popular. At the time of writing, the film has spent 20 days as one of the most-watched movies on HBO Max in the U.S., and currently ranks in second place behind Olivia Wilde‘s Oscars contender, The Invite. Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar also starred alongside Sweeney in The Housemaid, although neither will return for the upcoming sequel. The movie was a new addition to HBO Max on October 9 and has proven a big hit for the streamer ever since.

Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to
be somebody’s person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of
you.

You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have
already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most
durable way anybody has found to do this.

• When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy,
  conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
• You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is
  doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
• The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly
  until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
• You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.

You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own
life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the
relationship easier.

• This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of
  them equally seriously.
• You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a
  rival, and that never entirely goes away.
• It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each
  other, but whose turn it is this year.
• You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.

The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are
drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting
somebody you are not supposed to want.

• Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides,
  meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
• You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things
  more real than public ones.
• The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what
  it would cost either one to say it out loud.
• Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally
  stop hiding.

You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is
immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version
of it.

• Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five
  days, which is precisely the point of it.
• You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats
  decades of something merely comfortable.
• The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an
  enormous life afterwards because of it.
• You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the
  same way.

‘The Housemaid’ Is Coming to the Stage

• Image via Lionsgate

• Image via Lionsgate

• Image via Lionsgate

• Image by Jefferson Chacon

• Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image by Jefferson Chacon

Image via Lionsgate

• Image via Lionsgate

• Image via Lionsgate

• Image via Lionsgate

• Image by Jefferson Chacon

• Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image by Jefferson Chacon

Image via Lionsgate

Sweeney’s NSFW franchise is moving beyond the page and screen. On September 14, 2027, the story will officially move to the stage, making its debut at London’s Richmond Theatre, ahead of a planned tour. “With the stage play debuting next year and our sequel film in production, the momentum behind The Housemaid franchise continues to grow,” Jenefer Brown, Lionsgate’s President of Global Products & Experiences, said. She added:

“We’re thrilled to work with Simon, Hanna, Bekah, and Matthew to bring this story to the stage in an entirely new way, giving audiences the chance to experience its suspense, twists, and turns live.”

“We’re thrilled to work with Simon, Hanna, Bekah, and Matthew to bring this story to the stage in an entirely new way, giving audiences the chance to experience its suspense, twists, and turns live.”

Sydney Sweeney’s The Housemaid is one of the most-watched movies on HBO Max in the U.S. Make sure to stay tuned to Collider for all the latest streaming stories.

The Housemaid