‘Priscilla’ Star to Lead A24’s Adaptation of Popular 2025 Romance Novel

Two of Hollywood’s biggest rising stars are coming together to bring one of 2025’s biggest romance novels to the big screen.

Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla) and Drew Starkey (Queer) will star in an adaptation of Deep Cuts, Holly Brickley’s romance that has taken social media by storm since it released earlier this year. Sean Durkin will write and direct the film, and A24 will produce. Grammy-winning singer Blake Mills will handle the soundtrack. Production will begin in February.

The 2000s-set period piece is “a love story about two music-obsessed twentysomethings navigating the messy realities of ambition, belonging and adulthood over the course of an era-defining decade.”

Originally, Austin Butler and Saoirse Ronan were set to take on the lead roles but scheduling conflicts got in the way, leading A24 to turn to two of their recent success stories.

This is Spaeny’s fourth leading role in an A24 production, following Beef, Civil War, and Priscilla, in addition to her recent successes as a star of Alien: Romulus and the latest Knives Out film, titled Wake Up Dead Man. Spaeny, meanwhile, drew critical acclaim for his performance opposite Daniel Craig in A24’s adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel Queer, helmed by Challengers director Luca Guadagnino.

Deep Cuts was an instant and major success when it hit bookstore shelves in February of this year. It was was named a Best New Book by People and Barnes & Noble, and earned awards like the Indie Next Pick, an Apple Debut Pick, a Bookseller’s Book of the Month, a Jordy’s Book Club Pick, a Today Spring Pick, as well being named as one of Amazon’s Best Book of the Year Discovery Reads.