Sydney Sweeney Thriller Gets Warner Bros

The original Reddit story was penned by Joe Cote, a high school English teacher from Massachusetts who was inspired by true-crime podcasts and novels like "Gone Girl." He posted the story, originally titled "I Pretended to Be a Missing Girl So I Could Rob Her Family," to the subreddit r/shortstories in 2020. Cote, who will also serve as an executive producer, was initially skeptical when a Hollywood producer contacted him about his story. The story follows a homeless woman who, because of a striking resemblance, decides to impersonate a girl who has been missing for a decade to steal from the girl's wealthy family. However, after infiltrating the family, she discovers that the circumstances of the girl's disappearance are more sinister than she could have imagined. Sydney Sweeney's production company, Fifty-Fifty Films, which she founded in 2020, is behind the project. The company has been actively developing a variety of material, including the psychological thriller *The Housemaid* and a biopic about boxer Christy Martin, in which Sweeney will also star. Sweeney has stated that producing gives her a "say over decisions that would help benefit the project." The screenplay is being adapted by Eric Roth, an Oscar-winning screenwriter. Roth won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for *Forrest Gump* and has been nominated for six Academy Awards for his work on films such as *The Insider*, *Munich*, *Dune*, and *Killers of the Flower Moon*. This project is part of a larger trend of Hollywood looking to online forums for source material. Reddit's "NoSleep" subreddit, a forum for original horror stories, has been a particularly fertile ground, with other projects like "The Patient Who Nearly Drove Me Out Of Medicine" being optioned by Ryan Reynolds' production company. The television series *Tales from the Void* also adapts stories from the popular subreddit.