Haunting Adeline: Everything to Know About the Controversial Movie Adaptation

Very little has actually been confirmed about the Haunting Adeline film. There is no cast, no director, no studio and no release date. What there is, in enormous quantity, is opinion.

Since H.D. Carlton announced in mid-July that her bestselling novel is being adapted, the reaction has been fast, loud and frequently unkind on all sides. Petitions have been launched. Readers have been abused for defending the book, and others abused for criticising it. Underneath all of it sits a real question: what happens when a story built on stalking, coercion and sexual violence moves from the page, where a reader controls every image, to the screen, where a director does.

Here is what has been established, what has not, and what both sides are genuinely arguing. No spoilers.

First, what is Haunting Adeline?

Published in 2021 and self-released by Carlton, Haunting Adeline is the first half of the Cat and Mouse Duet, completed by Hunting Adeline in 2022. Without going near the plot: a writer moves into her late great-grandmother’s house and discovers she is being watched by a man who hunts traffickers and who becomes dangerously fixated on her.

It is not a niche title. It has drawn close to a million ratings on Goodreads and is routinely named as the book that defined dark romance on BookTok. It also carries extensive content warnings as a matter of record, covering stalking, sexual assault, violence and trafficking. It is published for adults, and Carlton has never presented it as anything else.

That combination, an enormous readership plus genuinely extreme material, is why the adaptation news landed the way it did.

What has actually been confirmed

Carlton announced the film herself in mid-July 2026, ending years of fan-made trailers and false claims that Netflix had already commissioned something. Her website marked the moment with a teaser that a movie was loading.

She has also said she is closely involved. Explaining why she chose a single film rather than a series, she told followers she has a say in the script, the casting, the music and the set design, and that she had met someone in the industry whose sensibility matched her own.

That is the complete list of confirmed detail. In development means exactly that: the project exists, and the significant creative and commercial decisions are still ahead of it.

What has not been confirmed

•       Studio, production company or distributor

•       Director or screenwriter

•       Any casting

•       A release date or a start of filming

•       Whether it is intended for cinemas or streaming

•       Whether the rights cover both books or only the first

•       How the most difficult material will be handled

Anything you have seen stating otherwise, including a 2027 release, an October filming start, open auditions, a Netflix home, specific actors attached or particular scenes confirmed as staying in, has no verified reporting behind it. Trade outlets including Variety have confirmed that no further detail is currently available. Scepticism is warranted here, because the volume of confident-sounding misinformation around this project is unusually high.

Why the announcement caused a backlash

Within days, a petition calling for the production to be stopped had passed 7,300 signatures, with parallel petitions launched in other countries. Its central argument is that the novel takes the things women are most often taught to fear, an intruder in the home, being restrained, being unable to refuse, and frames them as desirable.

The more interesting part of the criticism is not really about the book at all. Most critics accept that the novel exists, sells and has an audience. Their objection is to the change of medium. A reader builds the images herself and can close the book at any point. A film hands those images to a director, sets them to music, casts an actor the audience is meant to find attractive, and delivers the result to people who never chose to read it. Critics have pointed to the way sympathetic casting has softened public perception of real predators in other screen projects.

There is a live real-world backdrop in the UK, too. Stalking remains a persistent and under-prosecuted crime here, and campaigners including the Suzy Lamplugh Trust have spent years pressing for better police response and higher conviction rates. That does not mean a film causes stalking. It does mean the subject is not abstract for a significant number of readers.

What H.D. Carlton has said

Carlton responded in a video message roughly a week after the announcement, and it was pointed.

She opened by apologising, not for the book, but to readers who had been harassed for supporting it. She argued that critics cannot claim to advocate for survivors of sexual violence while shaming survivors for how they choose to process their experiences. Reading dark romance, including books with non-consent themes, does not make a reader wrong, disgusting or unhealthy, she said.

On the question of whether a film could encourage violence against women, she was blunt: no one and nothing is to blame for a man harming a woman except the man.

She also made a censorship argument, warning that a precedent set against one film could later be turned on work its critics value. Then she confirmed the point everyone was waiting for. The movie, she said, is still happening.

The case her defenders make

Beyond Carlton herself, the defence tends to run along three lines.

The first is that content warnings function as informed consent. Dark romance is one of the few corners of publishing where readers are told in advance, in detail, exactly what they are about to encounter. Nobody who picks the book up is being ambushed by it.

The second is catharsis and control. Supporters argue that fiction lets readers approach fear on their own terms, with a guaranteed exit, and that a meaningful number of readers describe the genre as part of how they have processed their own experiences. Carlton has said that mental health professionals support the idea that fiction serves different purposes for different people. This is worth flagging honestly: research on dark romance and its effects is thin and contested, and the confident claims made online in both directions run well ahead of the evidence.

The third is simply that the genre is no longer fringe. Dark romance has moved into the mainstream of UK publishing. Penguin now publishes beginner guides to it, and TikTok-driven sales have become influential enough that an official BookTok chart is being introduced in the UK this year. Treating millions of readers as a moral problem is, defenders argue, both futile and insulting.

What happens next

The nearest confirmed development is not the film. Days after the backlash began, Variety reported that Carlton is working with Deviant Ink Publishing on official comics and graphic novels, distributed by Blackstone, developed for adult readers and explicitly not toned down. Reported timings vary between late 2026 and early 2027, so treat any date as provisional.

For the film, a genuine update will look like one of four things: a named production company, a screenwriter or director attached, a start-of-production date, or marketing from a verified account. Casting rumours and fan edits are not news.

One practical test will arrive eventually. In the UK, the British Board of Film Classification will have to certify whatever gets made, and the certificate it receives will say a great deal about how faithful the adaptation has been. A film that keeps the book’s most extreme material intact is not a film that plays widely.

The honest position

Nobody can review a film that has no script, no director and no cast. The most useful thing anyone can do right now is hold two facts side by side: the adaptation is real, and almost nothing about it has been decided.

The argument, meanwhile, is not going anywhere, and it deserves better than the harassment currently attached to it. Whether the genre’s most divisive book can survive translation to screen is a legitimate question. So is whether readers should have to justify their taste to strangers. Both are worth discussing properly, and neither is helped by shouting.

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this piece, Rape Crisis England and Wales runs a 24/7 support line on 0808 500 2222, and the National Stalking Helpline can be reached on 0808 802 0300.