Inside The Housemaid's Secret: Filming Has Begun in Hoboken

Lights up in Hoboken. Cameras are rolling. The long-anticipated follow-up to The Housemaid has officially started production, and the set photos already have gossip columns and fan forums buzzing.

Sydney Sweeney returns as Millie Calloway, the brittle centerpiece of Freida McFadden’s bestselling series, and she's not alone this time. Kirsten Dunst joins the cast as Wendy Garrick, alongside Michele Morrone reprising his role as Enzo. New additions include Paul Anthony Kelly playing Douglas Garrick, with Brittany Snow and Steven Colin filling out the supporting ensemble. Behind the camera, Paul Feig is back in the director’s chair, and Rebecca Sonnenshine adapts McFadden’s second novel for the screenplay.

Why does this matter? Because the sequel promises not a rehash but a shift. Where the first film built tension around one household’s secrets, The Housemaid’s Secret relocates the danger and turns Millie’s fragile stability inside out. She accepts a new job—this time in a house that hides a woman Millie is forbidden to see and a locked door that keeps a truth under wraps. The suspicion builds slow. Little details accumulate. The more Millie pokes, the more the house seems to push back.

Production began on location in Hoboken, New Jersey, a choice that already hints at tone: intimate interiors, rain-slick streets, close angles that favor mood over spectacle. Lionsgate, which distributed the first film, is positioning the sequel for a December 17, 2027 release, aiming for both awards-season visibility and holiday box office traction. The gamble feels calculated. The 2025 original grossed near $400 million worldwide, a number that turned a compact psychological thriller into a bona fide franchise candidate.

Adaptations can drift away from their source. This one leans into McFadden’s darker, claustrophobic storytelling. Rebecca Sonnenshine’s script reportedly keeps the novel’s narrower focus on family dynamics while allowing Feig to shape suspense with the cinematic tools he favors: small camera moves, patient rhythms, performances that reveal more by what they conceal than by what they say.

Sydney Sweeney is also producing through her company, a sign that Millie’s perspective will remain central. Fans of the first film will notice some familiar faces returning and some notable absences. Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar, who played key roles in the original, are not part of this new chapter; the narrative instead orbits the Garick family and the new hazards their secrets create for Millie.

Filming in Hoboken signals a more intimate, tension-driven sequel set for December 17, 2027.

What to watch for next? Early set photos, casting updates, and the first glimpses of production design. Will Feig translate McFadden’s written tension into a cinematic kind of dread that keeps audiences talking? Can this chapter match the commercial momentum of its predecessor while deepening the psychological stakes? Those are the questions that will keep critics and viewers checking release calendars and trailers through 2027.

For now, the cameras are on, the cast is assembled, and Millie Calloway's next chapter has begun. Who will she become when the house finally opens its locked door?