Maika Monroe to Star in ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ Remake for 20th Century Studios

Maika Monroe is going to be one bad nanny.

In her first casting since starring in the horror hit Longlegs, Monroe has signed to topline 20^th Century Studios’ remake of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

Michelle Garza Cervera is directing the feature that is being produced by Radar Pictures’ Ted Field and Michael Schaefer and Mike Larocca via their banner, Department M.

The project adapts the 1992 thriller originally distributed by Buena Vista Pictures and directed by Curtis Hanson. Rebecca De Mornay starred as a twisted widow who, distraught over losing her own baby, insinuates herself into a family as their nanny, with the ultimate goal of taking the kids and the husband for herself. Annabella Sciorra played the mother.

The reimagining was conceived by Cervera and scripted by Micah Bloomberg, who created the Prime Video anthology show Homecoming and wrote the Margaret Qualley thriller Sanctuary. The project is seen as a two-hander and sources say that Monroe the first choice for the role of nanny.

The project lines up thematically for Cervera, who made the acclaimed body horror feature Huesera. The movie, which she co-wrote and directed, told of a woman who becomes pregnant and becomes a mother, but withers under the pressure of supernatural forces. The movie premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won best new narrative director and the Nora Ephron Award, and then went on to lauded with awards worldwide. It also earned 17 nominations at the Mexican Academy’s Ariel Awards, winning best first feature, original screenplay, makeup, and special effects.  

Over the past ten years, Monroe has become a modern day horror queen thanks to her turns in smart and elevated thrillers, mostly in the indie space. She broke out with David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows in 2014, co-starred in Adam Wingard’s The Guest, and played the lead in Chloe Okuno’s Watcher in 2022, among other movies.

This past summer, she starred opposite Nicolas Cage in Neon’s Longlegs, directed by Oz Perkins, which has grossed over $108 million worldwide and is said to be the one of most successful indie horror movie in the past ten years, She is poised next to shoot subversive fairy tale 100 Nights of Hero with Emma Corrin. 

Monroe is repped by WME and Entertainment 360. Cervera is repped by WME, Grandview and Hirsch Wallerstein. Bloomberg is repped by UTA and Sloss Law.