Here’s a cool one in the works at Warner Bros: Sydney Sweeney is attached to star in and produce I Pretended to Be a Missing Girl, via her Fifty-Fifty Films.
The movie project is based on a Reddit short story by Joe Cote. Fifty-Fifty notched Oscar-winning Forrest Gump and Dune scribe Eric Roth to adapt it.
In the short story, a drifter impersonates a missing girl to rob the girl’s family — only to realize she’s made a terrible mistake.
Vertigo’s Roy Lee, Steven Schneider, Trevor Engelson and Aaron Folbe at Underground are attached to produce.
Sweeney, the White Lotus and Euphoria star, is taking a bigger hand in producing the projects she stars in. She was an executive producer on Sony’s 2023 romantic comedy hit Anyone But You ($220.3 million global box office gross and $103M net profit after ancillaries), and she shepherded the nun horror movie Immaculate which world premiered at last year’s SXSW. Neon released that pic.
Upcoming, Sweeney is an EP on Paul Feig’s The Housemaid in which she stars opposite Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar for the thriller opening on Christmas Day. In that feature take of the Freida McFadden novel, Sweeney plays 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 the family’s secrets are far more dangerous than her own.
Sweeney is starring and producing Scandalous! in which she stars as Kim Novak. Colman Domingo is making his directorial debut with that Miramax project, which follows the clandestine love affair between Novak and singer-dancer and movie star Sammy Davis Jr. in 1957.
Sweeney is also producing and headlining David Michôd’s biopic of female boxer Christy Martin.
Next up for Sweeney is Apple’s Echo Valley with Juliane Moore, Kyle MacLachlan and Domhnall Gleeson.
Sweeney is repped by Paradigm and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush, Kaller, Gellman, Meigs & Fox. Roth is repped by CAA and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner Auerbach Hynick Jaime LeVine Sample & Klein.
