Amy Adams-vehicle Nightbitch, starring Amy Adams, has landed a Dec. 6, 2024, release in cinemas during the heart of awards season. The Searchlight Pictures and Annapurna film was originally intended to debut on Hulu, but will now get a theatrical release.
The project is from Marielle Heller, the actress-turned-filmmaker whose helming credits include 2015’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl and Melissa McCarthy art-forgery dramedy Can You Ever Forgive Me?, also from Searchlight.
Nightbitch is an adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s 2001 satirical novel about 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. But her new domesticity takes a surreal turn when she slowly realizes that she may be transforming into a protective canine.
Heller and her frequent collaborator Anne Carey (Diary of a Teenage Girl and Can You Ever Forgive Me?) are producing alongside Sue Naegle, Christina Oh and Stacy O’Neil, who is Adams’ partner at the Bond Group company). Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures originally developed the project.
“Rachel Yoder‘s book took my breath away,” said Heller in a statement when Nightbitch was announced in 2022. “I haven’t felt this way about a book since I read The Diary of a Teenage Girl many years ago. Rachel 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.”
Heller last directed the 2019 Mister Rogers drama, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which earned Tom Hanks an Oscar nomination.