'Nightbitch' Will Star Amy Adams As A Woman Who Thinks She Is Turning Into A Dog

In what sounds like a joke from 30 Rock, Oscar nominee Amy Adams is set to star in a new movie called Nightbitch at Annapurna Pictures where a new mother is becoming increasingly concerned that she's transforming into a dog. Yes, this is a totally real movie, and Tracy Jordan is somehow not involved despite his previous work on the dog transformation movie Fat Bitch.

Deadline has word on Annapurna Pictures winning the rights to Nightbitch, an adaptation of Rachel Yoder's upcoming novel of the same name that's slated to be published in the summer of 2021. Here's the official synopsis from the author's website:

In Nightbitch, an unnamed woman and former artist, thrust into stay-at-home domesticity after the birth of her son, becomes worried she's turning into a dog. Her husband, who travels for work five days a week, easily dismisses her fears from hotel rooms. Meanwhile, the mother is forced to contend with the very real physical manifestations of her solitary anxiety, with only her two-year-old son for company. As her symptoms intensify, she struggles to keep her alter-canine-identity secret. Finally jolted to action after an impulsive and disastrous encounter with the family cat, she seeks a cure for her condition in an herbal multi-level marketing scheme, a group of mommies all inexplicably named Jen, and Wanda White, a mysterious academic specializing in 'mythical ethnography.'

All right, when it's described like that, it doesn't sound completely ridiculous. If anything, this just feels like it could be a Wolfman-esque movie with a female lead, perhaps with some mocking of Avon cosmetics thrown in there for good measure.

Could there be some kind of commentary here on how mothers can feel shunned by friends after they've had their first child, suddenly finding themselves invited less to social gatherings and increasingly cast to the side? There's clearly some kind of metaphor at work here, especially with Deadline describing the novel as "exposing the absurd and feral truths of motherhood." And if it caught the attention of Amy Adams, it must have some real substance to it.

This will be the fifth time that Amy Adams has worked with Annapurna Pictures following The Master, American Hustle, Her, and Vice. All of those are roles that could have easily landed her an Oscar win, but the statue still eludes Adams despite being nominated six times. Perhaps Nightbitch will finally be the movie that gets her the award she so clearly deserves, though she may have another opportunity that arrives before that with Ron Howard's Hillbilly Elegy on the way.

As of now, there's no director attached to the project, but Rachel Yoder will be adapting her own novel for the screen. Megan Ellison, Sue Naegle, and Sammy Scher are executive producing for Annapurna Pictures with Amy Adams also producing with Stacy O'Neill through Bond Group Entertainment.