Sydney Sweeney To Star In Sleepy Hollow Re-telling

Just a day after reports that her remake of Barbarella is still going ahead, Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney has now been cast in Hollow, an upcoming horror thriller film set as another adaptation of Washington Irving’s atmospheric Gothic prose, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, from 1819. The film is set to be written and directed by Lindsey Anderson Beer, who is credited for the horror sequel Pet Semetary: Bloodlines, with Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment producing

To be precise, the film will also be a direct adaptation of Beer’s novel of the same name, inspired by Irving’s story.

Irving’s original short story first appeared in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, consisting of 34 essays and short stories. It focuses on a Connecticut school teacher called Ichabod Crane as he moves to a rural area near Tarrytown in 1790. There, he becomes infatuated with Katrina Van Tassel, a daughter of a well-off farmer, yet a mysterious and terrifying headless horseman’s hauntings pose a threat.

Sweeney has been cast as a reimagined version of Van Tassel, who is reframed as the narrator in Beer’s interpretational novel.  Her additional horror-based performances include Michael Mohan’s 2024 horror film Immaculate, centred around a novice nun who accepts an invite to an Italian convent which holds dark, distressing secrets.

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Irving’s story has been adapted previously into a 1922 silent film titled The Headless Horseman by Edward D. Venturini, as well as a segment in the 1949 film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad by Walt Disney. One of the more famous re-tellings came in 1999 by Gothic film icon Tim Burton, who titled his re-telling of the short story as Sleepy Hollow. This Academy Award-winning film saw Burton’s muse Johnny Depp star as Crane and 90s cinema icon Christina Ricci as Van Tassel, as well as performances by Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Casper Van Dien, and Jeffrey Jones.

About the Author

Ros Tibbs

Editor

Ros is a film and lit graduate writing news and reviews at The People's Magazine. She also writes long-form film theory, film history, analytical or curated recommendations pieces on other platforms.

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