--- name: "Rebecca Sonnenshine" canonical: "https://film.one/person/rebecca-sonnenshine" fi1m_id: "rebecca-sonnenshine" imdb_id: "nm0814412" tmdb_id: 82665 wikidata_id: "Q131983279" roles: ["Writer","Producer"] reviewed_on_fi1m: 4 average_fi1m_score: 67 average_as: "writer" average_over: 4 updated: "2026-09-23T10:48:05.076815+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Rebecca Sonnenshine ## Identity Rebecca Sonnenshine - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/rebecca-sonnenshine - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** rebecca-sonnenshine - **IMDb ID:** nm0814412 - **TMDB ID:** 82665 - **Wikidata ID:** Q131983279 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Sonnenshine, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131983279, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0814412/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/82665 Writer and producer. Born in Oroville, California. ## Details - **Work:** Writer, Producer - **Active:** 2009–present - **Frequently works with:** [Liz Friedlander](https://film.one/person/liz-friedlander.md) - **Average Fi1m score:** 67, as writer, over 4 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 2000s 71 (1), 2010s 72 (1), 2020s 63 (2) - **Fi1m against the critics:** 67 to 66 across 4 titles - **Score spread:** 0 at 80+, 4 at 60–79, 0 under 60 - **Genres:** Drama 2, Sci-Fi & Fantasy 2, Action & Adventure 1, Family 1, Mystery 1, Thriller 1 - **Screen time:** 2 hours of reviewed films - **Box office:** $400m across 1 films with figures - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Sonnenshine, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131983279, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0814412/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/82665 ## Coming up - *The Housemaid's Secret* (2027-12-17), Screenplay ## Streaming the US now - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*The Boys*](https://film.one/tv/the-boys.md) (72) - **HBO Max:** [*The Vampire Diaries*](https://film.one/tv/the-vampire-diaries.md) (71) - **Apple TV:** [*The Housemaid*](https://film.one/film/the-housemaid.md) (66) - **Netflix:** [*Little House on the Prairie*](https://film.one/tv/little-house-on-the-prairie.md) (60) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Rebecca Sonnenshine > Rebecca Sonnenshine is an adapter by trade, and a careful one: she takes other people's stories and makes them tidier, kinder and more sensible than they were. That is a skill, and on the evidence so far it is also the limit. On Rebecca Sonnenshine's prairie nobody is hungry for long, nobody is cold for long, and dirt is something that happens to boots. In her script for *The Housemaid* (2025) the housemaid spends a full hour being mistreated and noticing things before the plot lets her do anything about it. These are different faults, but they come from the same hand. Sonnenshine gives every character clear, sensible things to say and almost nothing to hide, and sensible people with nothing to hide are pleasant company and poor drama. She has spent most of her career working from other people's material. Two horror features, *The Haunting of Molly Hartley* (2008) and *The Keeping Hours* (2017), then five years on *The Vampire Diaries* (2011–2016) under Julie Plec, with whom she has worked five times. *Outcast* and *The Crossing* followed, then two seasons of *The Boys* (2019–2020), where she wrote and produced and built the second-season finale on the bones of *Ocean's Eleven* and *Casablanca*. *Archive 81* (2022) was the first programme she ran herself. Then *The Housemaid*, then eight episodes of *Little House on the Prairie* (2026). The best of her is in what she adds. Her *Little House* does not take the Ingalls' right to the land for granted, and it makes room for the Osage and for Black settlers, which neither Laura Ingalls Wilder nor the 1974 series did. When Erica Tremblay's episode slows down, holds on a face and lets a silence run to the end, you can see the programme the whole run might have been. It is the one hour in eight where the adults have something to say to each other that is not a plan. We were restless through most of the rest, and we know why: each hour works through a list of incidents from the books and gets to the credits with nobody in real want. *The Housemaid* made us impatient for the opposite reason. Sonnenshine keeps Sydney Sweeney's Millie standing there and taking it for sixty minutes so that Amanda Seyfried can set the second hour alight, and when the fire came we felt relief more than pleasure. She has said of the Wilder books that "Everything in my life has been jump-started by these books," and the devotion shows. She is too fond of this family to let anything hurt them for long. She writes horror and thrillers by preference, so she knows how to frighten people when the material asks. What we would like to see is a Sonnenshine script in which somebody is allowed to be cold, hungry and wrong for a whole episode. Until then, start with *The Housemaid* and be patient with the first hour, or with *The Boys*, where nobody in the room was worrying about being nice. ## Biography Rebecca Sonnenshine is a writer and producer. She graduated from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and received a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting in 1999. Early in her career she produced the feature films *Bunny* (2000), which received an Independent Spirit Award nomination, and *Reversion* (2008), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her television writing credits include episodes of *The Vampire Diaries* (2009–2016), *Outcast* (2016), *The Crossing* (2018) and *The Boys* (2019–2022), for which she received Emmy nominations. She developed, wrote and served as showrunner on the Netflix series *Archive 81* (2022). Sonnenshine wrote the screenplay for the 2025 film *The Housemaid* and developed and showruns the 2026 Netflix adaptation of *Little House on the Prairie*. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, latimes.com.* ## On Fi1m (4) - *Little House on the Prairie* (2026), Fi1m 60, Writer, Executive Producer, Teleplay, Creator, Story — [page](https://film.one/tv/little-house-on-the-prairie.md) - *The Housemaid* (2025), Fi1m 66, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/the-housemaid.md) - *The Boys* (2019), Fi1m 72, Executive Producer, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-boys.md) - *The Vampire Diaries* (2009), Fi1m 71, Writer, Story Editor, Executive Story Editor, Teleplay — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-vampire-diaries.md) ## Complete filmography (15) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Housemaid's Secret* (2027), Screenplay - *Little House on the Prairie* (2026), series, Executive Producer, Writer, Story, Teleplay, Creator — Fi1m 60, [page](https://film.one/tv/little-house-on-the-prairie.md) - *The Housemaid* (2025), Screenplay — Fi1m 66, [page](https://film.one/film/the-housemaid.md) - *Archive 81* (2022), series, Executive Producer, Teleplay, Writer, Creator - *The Boys* (2019), series, Writer, Executive Producer, Co-Executive Producer — Fi1m 72, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-boys.md) - *The Crossing* (2018), series, Writer, Co-Executive Producer - *The Keeping Hours* (2017), Writer - *Outcast* (2016), series, Writer, Co-Executive Producer - *The Vampire Diaries* (2009), series, Writer, Teleplay, Supervising Producer, Producer, Co-Producer, Story Editor, Executive Story Editor — Fi1m 71, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-vampire-diaries.md) - *Within* (2009), Writer - *The Haunting of Molly Hartley* (2008), Screenplay - *Reversion* (2008), Producer - *American Zombie* (2007), Writer - *Bunny* (2000), Producer - *Rhapsody in Bloom* (1998), Executive In Charge Of Production --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/rebecca-sonnenshine