Heading into the year-end holiday season, very few in Hollywood were focused on director Paul Feig’s The Housemaid, save for the social backlash engulfing star Sydney Sweeney over her American Eagle jeans ad. The in-demand young actress stars opposite Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar in the adaptation of Freida McFadden’s best-selling book of the same name.
They are now. And if they aren’t, they will be soon.
Over the Jan. 23-25 weekend, The Housemaid passed up Bridesmaids ($289.6 million) to become the top-grossing film of Feig’s career with a stunning $294.9 million in global ticket sales, not adjusted for inflation.
It’s also the top showing of Sweeney’s career in a leading role, easily trumping the breakout romancer Anyone But You ($208 million). And it has earned far more than many high-profile 2025 releases such as One Battle After Another, a frontrunner for the Oscar. It also comes as the box office continues to struggle even though the pandemic is in the rearview mirror. Many pundits believe midrange films, and especially those targeting females, are better suited for streaming. Feig vehemently disputes that.
The R-rated psychological thriller, costing a net $45 million to make, is a major victory for Feig in particular. Some 15 years ago — when R-rated comedies were all the rage — he pushed the boundaries of the genre when making Bridesmaids, an all-female property (sorry, Seth Rogen and pack). The Universal film ranked No. 12 on the year’s list of top-grossing films. It’s also ahead of the 2024 book-to-movie sensation It Ends With Us, which grossed $250 million.
Feig became the toast of the town. He also bonded with Bridesmaids star Melissa McCarthy, and more hit movies followed, including The Heat (2013) and Spy! (2015). Still, there was a fight every time.
“I don’t how many times in my career I’ve had to prove to Hollywood that women will show up at movie theaters, but they still do,” said Feig. “It happened with Bridesmaids, it happened with Spy, it happened with The Heat and Simple Favor to a lesser degree, since it didn’t do as well as I wanted to. But it still is considered a success because the budget was so small. It’s just what I do. I do it over and over and over again. The town always seemed so amazed when women show up. So these movies, I don’t know what it’s going to take for people to just get it that this is a giant audience out there that just needs to be served.”
Feig continued, “But they need to be served something good. You can’t just serve them shit. And I think that’s what happened for so long, a certain kind of romance or rom-coms. Some were great and some weren’t. And then I think the quality just started dropping because I don’t know, people were just doing, oh, women will just show up for this. And it’s like, well, no, women are as discerning as anybody else, so you just got to give them great stuff.”
Then came the reboot of Ghostbusters with a twist — the ensemble cast would be all-female. The Sony film was deemed a major disappointment even though it too earned north of $229 million globally, considering it had a higher budget and marketing costs.
Feig wasn’t exactly thrown into director’s jail, but he has never worked for a major studio again. Nor was he willing to give up making females pics. A Simple Favor went to Lionsgate, while the recent sequel, A Simple Favor 2, went straight to streaming via Amazon’s Prime (that decision was largely the result of the pandemic).
Now comes along The Housemaid, which has two built-in sequels, since the books are a trilogy. Insiders say while Lionsgate has yet to seal a deal for Sweeney to return, she will be in The Housemaid’s Secret. Seyfried’s character isn’t in the second book, but she and the filmmakers have indicated her character could make an appearance.
“The female audience has been and will continue to be a tremendous opportunity if you make the film at the right price with the right partners. It can be both incredibly rewarding creatively and financially,” said Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chairman Adam Fogelson, who has a long history of giving the greenlight to female-led pics. He was at Universal when Feig made Bridesmaids, and also Pitch Perfect and Fifty Shades of Grey. And at STX, he backed Bad Moms and Hustlers.
Feig’s leading ladies heap praise on the director. Seyfried has said in various interviews she felt “completely liberated” by the filmmaker, who allowed her to take risks with her character. In describing his unconventional approach, she said she enjoyed surprising Feig with her performances, describing their working relationship as highly engaging.
“Here’s what we did that everybody needs to do is this movie was engineered to be a group experience for an audience. If you see this movie in a theater with people, people go nuts. They’ve right from the get-go, people are, I got a lot of laughs in there. There’s a lot of gasps, there’s a lot of shock, there’s a lot of twists,” said Feig. “And when I’m testing these movies and when we’re assembling them, I start my test screenings like five weeks into my director’s cut, so that we’re trying fine-tuning the movie each time we’re recording the audience, not only just audio, but we’re recording them with night vision. So I can watch and see are people leaning forward? Are they reacting? Are they covering their eyes? Are they jumping up and down?”
Continuing, he said, “And that’s why I think we’re doing so well. Word just goes out that you’re going to go to the theater and you’re going to have a blast. People aren’t just sitting there passively munching popcorn and looking at their phones during this movie. People are really involved. And so that’s what filmmakers have to do. Otherwise, everything will end up on streaming. I don’t know how many times I can say this, but this is my fifth movie to cross a hundred million dollars, and they’re all female-led movies.”
Bridesmaids eventually topped out at around $324 million because of two rereleases in Australia (either way, Housemaid will eclipse that stat as well).
Both Fieg and Fogelson say the intention is shoot the Housemaid sequel this year for a release in 2027.
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