Paul Feig announces that The Housemaid sequel will begin shooting later this year

Paul Feig has revealed that The Housemaid sequel will start shooting this autumn.

The 63-year-old filmmaker's adaptation of Freida McFadden's novel was a box-office hit when it was released in December last year and he has confirmed that the cast and crew are "ready to go" for the sequel, which will see both Sydney Sweeney and Michele Morrone reprising their roles.

Feig told The Hollywood Reporter at the Academy Awards on Sunday (15.03.26): "We're going to start shooting in the fall. The script is all finished, we're just doing a little bit of rewrites on it. We're ready to go.

"Sydney's coming back and Michele's coming back and then some new very exciting actors are coming in."

The Bridesmaids director has been elated by the response to The Housemaid from cinemagoers after his last three movies – The School for Good and Evil, Jackpot! and Another Simple Favor – were all released on streaming.

Feig said: "It's amazing. I mean, we're just about to hit $400 million worldwide with it, which is thrilling.

"I make my movies for audiences and to have a group experience and so to get this in the theatres and to have all these people showing up and having fun and filming themselves watching the movie having fun, that's how we're going to get the movie theatres back – give people a good time in the theatre."

Feig previously detailed how he was inspired by the Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock during the making of The Housemaid – which also stars Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar.

The Last Christmas filmmaker said: "What I love about Hitchcock is he always lets you have fun. I've watched so many thrillers in my life that take themselves so seriously that I don't feel there's room for fun.

"I'm very religious about the thriller genre, but how can I bring (laughs) into that genre and get the double response out of the audience? We're treating the story seriously, but there's something wonderfully absurd about this dangerous situation."

However, Feig doesn't adopt the same methodical planning as the iconic Psycho filmmaker.

He said: "I leave myself very open.

"When I started my career, I obviously loved Hitchcock, and he storyboarded every shot, didn't shoot any more frames than he needed so he could control the edit.

"I tried to do that, but you get to the set, and people have ideas, and you're slapping their ideas down because it takes you off your plan. And I realised early on that I was cutting off all the creativity from my cast."

The director also revealed that he is extremely reliant on test screenings when developing movies and even uses night vision goggles to examine the behaviour of an audience.

He said: "I am very slavish to test screenings.

"I have 10 weeks (to put together) a director's cut where no one else can mess with me. I'll do my first recruited screening at about five weeks, just to say, okay, I think this is working, it's all together now, but I don't want to fall in love with anything.

"I find night vision to be incredibly helpful because you can see people are watching passively versus when they start sitting forward and looking around at each other."