Sydney Sweeney’s next film set to sell a million books, says Scott Glassgold

A publishing milestone just turbocharged buzz for Sydney Sweeney's next supernatural horror, and producer Scott Glassgold is steering that momentum toward the screen.

Here is a Hollywood sentence I did not expect to type this week: a horror novel from a boutique imprint just hit the million-copies mark before the movie even starts shooting — and that is very much the point.

The book-first play that makes studios breathe easier

Scott Glassgold — manager, producer, and the guy behind 12:01 Books — has been quietly running a very modern experiment: take a buzzy internet story, build it into a real-deal novel, and let the sales do the talking long before cameras roll. On The Town with Matt Belloni, he said the book version of Marcus Kliewer’s The Caretaker was about to hit seven figures, and the project is now being touted as having crossed the million-copies-sold line. Depending on when you started the stopwatch, it’s at or just over that milestone — either way, that is a lot of readers for a horror story that began life as a 30-page PDF.

"In addition to Sydney Sweeney and David Bruckner, like literally we are about to sell a million books, right?"

That quote wasn’t just victory-lap stuff. The strategy is leverage. By turning a short, viral scare into a New York Times-bestselling novel, Glassgold essentially handed Universal something with proven demand instead of a logline and a prayer. He was blunt about the philosophy: long-lasting intellectual property beats flash- in-the-pan virality, and a million readers makes every studio conversation easier. He also mentioned he has another adaptation still alive over at Amazon MGM, which tells you he is running the same play on multiple fields.

So what is The Caretaker, exactly?

This is Sydney Sweeney’s next horror outing, and it is not just string music and jump scares. The story follows Macy Mullins, who is drowning in debt and takes a too-good-to-be-true, three-day caretaking gig at an isolated property deep in Oregon. The paycheck is generous, the rules are... specific, and the house clearly did not get the memo about behaving normally. Think supernatural dread wrapped around psychological suspense, with a nasty set of boundaries you do not want to cross.

Who is making it and where things stand

• Star: Sydney Sweeney, who is also producing via her Fifty-Fifty Films banner
• Writer-director: David Bruckner, the filmmaker behind The Night House and The Ritual
• Producers: Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Scott Glassgold
• Studio: Universal Pictures, which moved quickly after Kliewer’s short story went viral and then expanded into a full novel
• Source material: Originally a 30-page PDF that became a New York Times-bestselling novel under Glassgold’s 12:01 Books
• Sales milestone: At or over one million copies sold before filming
• Status: Pre-production underway; Bruckner is writing the screenplay
• Side note: Glassgold says another adaptation he’s shepherding remains active at Amazon MGM

The takeaway? Horror still sells, especially when you build the audience before the first slate clap. If those million readers show up at the theater, The Caretaker may end up being the case study everyone else tries to copy.