Todd Haynes and Cate Blanchett Plan Reunion with Genet's The Maids

Todd Haynes is preparing a film adaptation of Jean Genet's play The Maids, with Cate Blanchett likely to star, the director told the French outlet Le Point. The project sits behind De Noche in his queue, the Pedro Pascal and Danny Ramirez feature expected to begin shooting soon and likely to premiere at Cannes in May 2027.

Details are scarce, and Haynes wants them that way. He told Le Point he "can't say anything" about his "very specific take" on the material — one he says he hasn't seen anywhere else. That's the whole statement. It's also, from the director of Carol and Poison, enough to be going on with.

Blanchett and Haynes last collaborated memorably on Carol (2015). The Genet connection runs older: Blanchett performed in a 2013 staging of The Maids alongside Isabelle Huppert and Elizabeth DeBicki. Haynes, for his part, has adapted Genet before — his 1991 feature debut Poison translated three Genet novels into what critics have called a terrifying picture of base pathologies. He clearly likes the author.

What did Haynes say about Genet?

Plenty, actually. Haynes called Genet "an absolute genius" and "always rooted in the truth; he goes where everyone else is afraid to go — into the raw, into the political." The praise fits Genet's entire catalogue, and it fits The Maids most of all. Genet wrote the play in 1947; it has since become one of the defining texts of twentieth-century theatre.

The premise, briefly: two domestic workers, resentful of their inferior social position, try to revenge themselves against society by destroying their employer. Their attempt to betray their mistress's lover to the police fails, and as the danger of exposure grows, they dream of murdering Madame — little aware of the true power behind their darkest fantasy.

Class rage, role-play, ritual. Genet material, in other words.

Has The Maids been filmed before?

Barely, which makes Haynes's choice more interesting than it might first appear. The only notable film adaptation to date is Christopher Miles's 1974 feature, starring Glenda Jackson, Susannah York and Vivien Merchant. Half a century has passed without another serious attempt. That's unusual for a play this canonical, and it means Haynes will be defining the material for a filmgoing generation that has never seen it on screen.

When will we hear more?

Expect news to arrive around De Noche's premiere — think May 2027, if the Cannes timing holds. Production on De Noche, with Pascal and Ramirez, starts next month according to earlier reports. The Maids will follow.

For Blanchett, the role would mark a return to material she already knows from the inside, having shared the 2013 stage with Huppert and DeBicki. For Haynes, it's a full-circle move: the novelist who fueled his debut now supplying his post-De Noche project. If the pattern holds — Genet adaptation, career landmark — the wait until 2027 may feel longer than it should.