Netflix’s ‘The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo’ Adaptation Gets Major Update

Netflix’s adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo has found its new director! After Leslye Headland confirmed last month that she had exited the project, Deadline reported Tuesday that filmmaker Maggie Betts will direct the upcoming film.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo will mark Bett’s latest project after The Burial, the Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones-starring film from Amazon Studios. Betts, whose previous credits include her 2010 directorial debut The Carrier and her 2017 debut feature Novitiate, will also co-write the screenplay with Liz Tigelaar.

Originally slated as a limited series at Freeform before Netflix took over the project as a film adaptation, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is based on Jenkins Reid’s 2017 bestselling novel of the same name. Per Netflix’s synopsis, “In a long awaited interview with a young journalist, Evelyn Hugo, an aging Hollywood starlet, pulls back the curtain on her seven marriages, and as she tells tales of Hollywood scandals, betrayals, and woe, she unveils shocking truths about her own life and the lives of everyone around her.”

Jenkins Reid’s book spent 120 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller Paperback, and went viral on BookTok. Netflix announced in March 2022 amid the book’s surging popularity that it would adapt Evelyn Hugo for the big screen. The upcoming film will be executive produced by Jenkins Reid with Margaret Chernin. Liza Chasin for 3Dot Productions and Brad Mendelsohn for Circle Management + Productions will serve as producers.

Netflix hasn’t yet made any casting announcements, but Jessica Chastain, who had long been favored by fans to portray Evelyn’s longtime secret love Celia St. James, confirmed in December 2023 that she would not star in the film.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo marks the fourth of Jenkins Reid’s’ novels to get screen treatment and follows the March 2023 debut of Prime Video’s Daisy Jones & The Six, an adaptation of the author’s 2019 novel of the same name. That book is set in the same universe as Evelyn Hugo and part of a quartet of interconnected stories, which also includes Malibu Rising, Jenkins Reid’s’ 2021 novel that is set to be adapted by Hulu. The author’s 2016 novel One True Loves was adapted into a romcom film in 2023.