Sadie Sink jumps from MCU to A24 with a new movie from Hustlers director
Fresh from her MCU stint, Sadie Sink is in talks to lead an A24 adaptation from the Hustlers director of an Emma Cline novel — but which?
Looks like Sadie Sink isn't having a quiet year—she's reportedly in pole position for the lead in a new A24 film adaptation, fresh off her recent superhero stint. It's early days, but there's a fair bit to chew over here if you're keeping tabs on Hollywood's next prestige project.
The adaptation of Emma Cline's bestselling novel The Guest is in the works at A24, with Sadie Sink being considered for the main role and Lorene Scafaria lined up to both write and direct.
A major bidding battle
Here's what's going on: A24 is teaming up with Square Peg, and both are in the process of locking down rights to The Guest. It isn't open-shut: Deadline reports at least a dozen different parties wanted a shot at Cline's material, but A24's proposal—complete with Sink and Lorene Scafaria attached—won the auction.
Nothing's signed just yet, so we're still in rumour territory, but it's not usually this noisy unless an announcement is incoming. And I'd wager the prospect of Scafaria (who directed Hustlers, plus episodes of Succession and New Girl) behind the camera only threw more fuel on the fire.
Spoils of stardom
If you haven't kept up: Sadie Sink shot to fame as Max in Netflix's Stranger Things, and just made a splash in the MCU, playing Jean Grey in this year's smash hit Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Point being, you get why she's suddenly all over these casting shortlists.
Meanwhile, Scafaria's CV is—well, quietly impressive. Beyond the buzzy Hustlers, she wrote and directed The Meddler and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and has been behind the camera for some of TV's best-directed episodes in the last decade. Round it out with A24's track record for slightly oddball, prestige-leaning adaptations, and you get a package that tends to turn industry heads.
The story behind The Guest
The novel in question isn't exactly your typical beach read. The Guest landed in 2023 and immediately picked up national bestseller status. The plot follows Alex, a 22-year-old escort from New York, who finds herself drifting through the rarefied—let's say not entirely welcoming—social circles of the Hamptons, all set over five particularly disorienting summer days. There's class tension, there's isolation, there are bad sunburns (metaphorical and otherwise). Alex can see this world, but she's never truly a part of it.
Emma Cline's The Guest spent five days with a rootless outsider in the Hamptons, earning critical praise and a spot on the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction longlist.
Publishers and critics went for it hard: Esquire said the book is 'dreamlike and disaffected'; The New York Times saw Alex as a destabilising force amidst all that sharp-edged social distance. For Cline, it's another hit alongside her previous books, The Girls and Switzy.