Todd Haynes and Cate Blanchett Plan Reunion with Adaptation of Jean Genet’s The Maids

Every Todd Haynes movie—especially when they’re susceptible to last-minute cancellations—is an event and a gift. Thus as we await the overdue, Cannes-likely arrival of De Noche, it’s heartening to know the next-next project is already in motion. Speaking with Le Point, Haynes revealed the project is a take on Jean Genet’s play The Maids that will likely star Cate Blanchett, who’d participated in a 2013 performance with Isabelle Huppert and Elizabeth DeBicki.

Details remain slim, the writer-director making sure to note that he “can’t say anything” about his “very specific take” that he’s not seen elsewhere. Genet, in Haynes’ estimation, is “an absolute genius” and “always rooted in the truth; he goes where everyone else is afraid to go—into the raw, into the political.” (All such adjectives absolutely apply to Haynes’ feature debut Poison, which translated three Genet novels into a terrifying picture of base pathologies.) The material is less-trod than one might expect: its only notable film adaptation is Christopher Miles’ 1974 feature starring Glenda Jackson, Susannah York, and Vivien Merchant.

I would anticipate hearing more about The Maids when De Noche premieres—again, let’s think about May of 2027. In the meantime, a quick summary of Genet’s play for those less familiar:

“In The Maids, two domestic workers, deeply resentful of their inferior social position, try to revenge themselves against society by destroying their employer. When their attempt to betray their mistress’s lover to the police fails and they are in danger of being found out, they dream of murdering Madame, little aware of the true power behind their darkest fantasy.”