Searchlight Pictures Picks Up Worldwide Rights for Neo-Horror Film "Nightbitch"

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Searchlight Pictures has picked up the rights to a feature adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s novel Nightbitch, set to star Amy Adams.

What’s Happening:

Adams (Enchanted and its upcoming sequel, Disenchanted) is starring in the project that is being written and directed by Marielle Heller, the actress-turned-filmmaker behind 2015’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl.
The film will shoot this September in Los Angeles, and is set to stream on Hulu.
Yoder’s book, published July 2021, tells of a woman who finds herself in a mind-bending and energy-sapping routine of raising a toddler in a suburban home while her husband is on lengthy business trips. According to Searchlight, the woman slowly embraces the feral power deeply rooted in motherhood, as she becomes increasingly aware of the bizarre and undeniable signs that she may be turning into a canine.
The book looked at the pressure women feel to be modern mothers, and the feature project is described as being a darkly comic neo-horror.
Annapurna picked up the rights to the book in July 2020 and was developing it as a vehicle for Adams, later bringing on Heller.
Producing the film are Megan Ellison, Anne Carey (who produced Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl), Stacy O’Neil, Christina Oh, Adam Paulsen and Sue Naegle, as well as Heller and Adams.
Heller and Brewster are producing via their Defiant By Nature production banner, Adams and O’Neil via their Bond Group company, and Carey via her Archer Gray shingle.
Sammy Scher and Havilah Brewster are executive producing.

What They’re Saying:

Marielle Heller said in a statement: “Rachel Yoder‘s book took my breath away. I haven’t felt this way about a book since I read The Diary of a Teenage Girl many years ago. Rachel's darkly hilarious tale of motherhood and rage made me feel seen. And adapting it with Amy Adams in mind has been the thing that has kept me going through the pandemic.”