Apartment 7A: Rosemary’s Baby Prequel Movie Hits Paramount+ This Year

“Satan is his father and his name is Adrian!” shouts the coven leader Roman Castevet at the end of 1968’s. Rosemary’s Baby. “He shall overthrow the mighty and lay waste their temples. He shall redeem the despised and wreak vengeance in the name of the burned and the tortured.”

Even when making allowances for Roman’s (Sidney Blackmer) understandable delight at seeing his plan come to fruition, that’s a lot of expectation to put on a newborn, no matter who his father might be. Unfortunately, the sequels chronicling Adrian’s rise to power didn’t quite live up to those expectations. Neither the 1976 TV movie Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby, in which Patty Duke subs in for Mia Farrow, nor original author Ira Levin’s follow-up book Son of Rosemary (1997) manages to deliver what Roman promised.

But for the next film branching out of Rosemary’s Baby, Paramount+ is going with a fresh approach and expanding the story from the opposite direction to reveal what happened in Rosemary’s infamous apartment before the original film. We’ll soon get to see the results in the prequel film Apartment 7A, which is out this October.

Set in 1965, Apartment 7A stars Ozark breakout and future Silver Surfer Julia Garner as a dancer who moves into the titular space after suffering a career ending injury. There, she’ll find herself drawn to a dark power emanating from her neighbors, who “promise her a shot at fame,” according to the synopsis. Garner’s co-stars include Dianne Wiest, Jim Sturgess, and Kevin McNally, as well as supporting turns from Marli Siu and Andrew Buchan.

Story details are scarce at this point, but it’s not hard to imagine Garner’s dancer feeling the same temptations that ensnared Guy (John Cassavetes) in the original. A struggling actor, Guy gave his wife Rosemary to the coven in exchange for success. What will the dancer exchange to be made whole and to continue her career?

Interestingly, there has been a recent boom in “scary baby” movies, with both Sydney Sweeney’s Immaculate and the franchise prequel The First Omen delivering quality horror in theaters earlier this year. Apartment 7A could very well continue that run, especially when you consider the strong talent in front of and behind the camera. Garner has proven herself a steely actor with an impressive range, even when carrying the tense thriller The Assistant.

While Paramount+ is promoting the movie by foregrounding A Quiet Place director John Krasinski and figures from The Purge franchise as producers, the real appeal is the writer and director. Apartment 7A is directed by Natalie Erika James, whose thoughtful debut movie Relic told a horrifying story about dementia and loss. Working with co-writer Christian White, with whom she re-teams for Apartment 7A, James found terror in the mundane and deeply personal, making her an ideal filmmaker to take on a Rosemary’s Baby project.

“Apartment 7A is the perfect way to kick off the Halloween season,” said Jeff Grossman, Executive Vice President, Programming, Paramount+ in a press release. “Director Natalie Erika James and the prodigious creative team have crafted a chilling and clever new entry into the genre.”

Even if Apartment 7A doesn’t redeem the despised or wreak vengeance in the name of the burned and the tortured, it has enough talent to hopefully tell a creepy story worthy of the original.

Apartment 7A streams on Paramount+ in October 2024.