Netflix’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo film has found its director. More than a year after it was announced the streamer would adapt Taylor Jenkin’s Reid‘s New York Times bestseller into a film, Netflix announced Monday that Leslye Headland will direct the adaptation and help bring the decades-spanning love story of Evelyn Hugo and her one true love, as well as the many husbands in between, to the screen.
The Thursday report marks one of just a few announcements since the adaptation was confirmed to be in the works. Jenkins Reid’s beloved novel was initially slated to be brought to life as a series at Freeform. However, three years after that news was confirmed, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed in March 2022 that those plants were scrapped and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo would instead be adapted into a movie by Netflix to be written by Little Fires Everywhere creator, showrunner and executive producer Liz Tigelaar.
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The highly-anticipated film is based on Jenkins Reid’s 2017 novel, which has spent 54 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller Paperback list in 2021 and has become a BookTok sensation. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo centers around the fictional Old Hollywood star Evelyn Hugo, who at the age of 79 gives her final interview to Monique Grant, a little-known journalist. The story details Hugo’s life in Hollywood and her seven various husbands, as well as her one true, and secret, love, fellow actress Celia St. James.
Headland –who has been attached to TV shows like Black Monday and Smilf at Showtime, as well as Netflix’s Russian Doll, directed feature films like Bachelorette and About Last Night, and recently wrapped production on Disney+’s Star Wars spinoff The Acolyte, per Deadline – joins a crew that also includes Liza Chasin for 3Dot Productions and Brad Mendelsohn for Circle of Confusion as producers. Jenkins Reid and Margaret Chernin are attached to the film as executive producers.
Few other details about the movie, including the cast (Jenkins Reid did recently tease that there is a “short list of women” for the roles of Evelyn and Celia), are known, but Jenkins Reid and Tigelarr confirmed in March of this year that the script is complete and was “now in the hands of the people who are going to make it, and I am so proud of it.” Netflix has not announced a premiere window for its The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo film.
