Some stories get retold because they ran out of ideas. Others get retold because someone finally found the right angle. Hollow looks like the second kind. Sony’s supernatural reimagining of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” puts Sydney Sweeney front and center as Katrina Van Tassel — and for the first time in the story’s 200-year screen life, Katrina is the protagonist. Fall 2027. Mark it.
Finally, Katrina gets her movie
Here’s what’s genuinely fresh about this one. Every version you’ve seen — including Tim Burton’s 1999 film with Johnny Depp as Ichabod — told the story through the men. Hollow flips the camera. The tale unfolds through Katrina’s eyes, and the love triangle with Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones stays intact, but the power dynamic is entirely new: Katrina is auctioned off for marriage to settle her family’s debts.
That’s a feminist reimagining with teeth, not a coat of paint. A young woman whose future is being sold to the highest bidder, in a haunted valley, in a story everyone thinks they know? That’s a premise with somewhere to go.
The team behind it
Writer-director Lindsey Anderson Beer (Pet Sematary: Bloodlines) is adapting her own debut novel — and yes, both the novel and the film are eyeing fall 2027, which is a neat little publishing-to-screen pipeline. Sweeney isn’t just starring; she’s producing through her banner Honey Trap, her first film production under the company. LuckyChap produces alongside Honey Trap and Lab Brew.
Casting news broke this week that Belmont Cameli — the Off Campus breakout — has joined as Brom Bones, confirmed by Deadline. Cameli talked to Entertainment Weekly on September 28 and described the film as “heavily thematic and stylized… a period piece,” adding that Sweeney is “a fantastic actress.” Ichabod Crane’s casting is still open, which means the triangle’s third corner is the industry’s favorite guessing game right now.
Why the timing is perfect
Gothic romance is having a moment, and audiences are hungry for period horror with a pulse. There’s something delicious about a story set in 1820 speaking directly to right now. The debt-marriage plot, the woman at the center of a legend that used to treat her as a prize — it lands differently in 2026 than it did in 1999.
And Sweeney keeps making interesting choices. Between this and her producing ambitions, she’s building the kind of career that lasts: big swings, real authorship, genre work with substance — the sort of Hollywood glow-up the industry loves to celebrate. A supernatural erotic thriller told through Katrina Van Tassel’s eyes is exactly the kind of role that separates a star from a celebrity.
A genre ripe for a comeback
The erotic thriller has been quietly knocking on Hollywood’s door for years, and gothic horror might be the perfect way back in. Think about it: the genre’s golden age gave us atmosphere-drenched classics, and Hollow arrives with all the right ingredients — a period setting, a slow-burn love triangle, and supernatural stakes. Done well, it’s catnip for adult audiences who want their scares with some sophistication. Done poorly, well — but nothing about this team suggests poorly. Beer wrote and directed her way into this chair, Sweeney is producing it herself, and LuckyChap’s track record with female-led stories speaks for itself.
The one thing to watch
The novel isn’t out yet, so detailed plot beats beyond the love-triangle-and-debt premise are unconfirmed — that’s industry talk territory, and we’ll wait for the book. But the bones of it are strong. Stories rooted in classic literature keep finding new life when someone finds the angle nobody tried, and “what if Katrina was the hero all along” is precisely that angle.
Our early verdict
Enthusiastic. A gothic period piece with a modern spine, a star-producer betting on herself, and a director adapting her own novel? Hollow has all the ingredients of the kind of mid-budget genre film people end up loving hardest. We’ll be watching the Ichabod casting news like everyone else — fall 2027 can’t arrive soon enough.
