Rosemary's Baby is a 1968 American psychological horror film written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on Ira Levin's 1967 novel.

The film stars Mia Farrow as a newlywed living in Manhattan who becomes pregnant, but soon begins to suspect that her neighbors have sinister intentions regarding her and her baby.

[3] While it is primarily set in New York City, the majority of principal photography for Rosemary's Baby took place in Los Angeles throughout late 1967.

The movie successfully launched a titular franchise, which includes a 1976 made-for-TV sequel, a streaming exclusive prequel, Apartment 7A (2024), and a television miniseries adaptation.

In 1965, Rosemary Woodhouse and her husband, stage actor Guy, tour the Bramford, a large Renaissance Revival apartment building in Manhattan.

In the basement laundry room, Rosemary meets a young woman, Terry Gionoffrio, a recovering drug addict whom Minnie and Roman Castevet, the Woodhouses' elderly neighbors, have taken in.

The next morning, Guy explains the scratches covering her body by claiming that he did not want to miss "baby night" and had raped her while she was unconscious.

Prior to passing away, he briefly regained consciousness and instructed to give Rosemary a book on witchcraft, All of Them Witches, along with the cryptic message: "The name is an anagram."

Using Scrabble tiles, Rosemary works out that Roman Castevet is an anagram for Steven Marcato, the son of a former Bramford resident and a reputed Satanist.

[4] He knew the director was a ski buff who was anxious to make a film with the sport as its basis, so he sent him the script for Downhill Racer along with the galleys for Rosemary's Baby.

[5] Polanski read the latter book non-stop through the night and called Evans the following morning to tell him he thought Rosemary's Baby was the more interesting project, and would like the opportunity to write as well as direct it.

[6] Polanski closely modeled it on the original 1967 novel by Ira Levin and incorporated large sections of the novel's dialogue and details, with much of it being lifted directly from the source text.

[8] Polanski originally envisioned Rosemary as a robust, full-figured, girl-next-door type, and wanted Tuesday Weld or his own fiancée Sharon Tate to play the role.

[8][9][10] Since the book had not yet reached bestseller status, Evans was unsure the title alone would guarantee an audience for the film, and he believed that a bigger name was needed for the lead.

Farrow, with a supporting role in Guns at Batasi (1964) and the yet-unreleased A Dandy in Aspic (1968) as her only feature film credits, had an unproven box office track record; however, she had gained wider notice with her role as Allison MacKenzie in the popular television series Peyton Place, and her unexpected marriage to noted singer Frank Sinatra.

[16] When Farrow was reluctant to film a scene that depicted a dazed and preoccupied Rosemary wandering into the middle of Fifth Avenue into oncoming traffic, Polanski pointed to her pregnancy padding and reassured her, "no one's going to hit a pregnant woman".

[1] Farrow recalled that the dream sequence in which her character is attending a dinner party on a yacht was filmed on a vessel near Santa Catalina Island.

[18] Though Paramount had initially agreed to spend $1.9 million to make the film, the shoot was overextended due to Polanski's meticulous attention to detail, which resulted in his completing up to fifty takes of single shots.

[1] The shoot was further disrupted when, midway through filming, Farrow's husband, Frank Sinatra, served her divorce papers via a corporate lawyer in front of the cast and crew.

[19] In an effort to salvage her relationship, Farrow asked Evans to release her from her contract, but he persuaded her to remain with the project after showing her an hour-long rough cut and assuring her she would receive an Academy Award nomination for her performance.

"[25] Stanley Eichelbaum of the San Francisco Examiner called the film "a delightful witches brew, a bit over-long for my taste, but nearly always absorbing, suspenseful and easier to swallow than Ira Levin's book.

Its suggestions of deviltry in a musty and still-respectable old apartment house on Manhattan's Upper West Side are more gracefully and appealingly related than in the novel, which I found awfully silly, when it wasn't downright noxious.

The very idea of a contemporary case of witchcraft, in which an innocent young housewife is impregnated by the Devil, is to say the least unnerving, particularly when the pregnancy is marked by all degrees of mental and physical pain.

"[26] Variety said, "Several exhilarating milestones are achieved in Rosemary's Baby, an excellent film version of Ira Levin's diabolical chiller novel.

"[27] The Monthly Film Bulletin said that "After the miscalculations of Cul de Sac and Dance of the Vampires", Polanski had "returned to the rich vein of Repulsion".

The site's critics' consensus describes it as "A frightening tale of Satanism and pregnancy that is even more disturbing than it sounds thanks to convincing and committed performances by Mia Farrow and Ruth Gordon.

[43] Mia and Roman was screened originally as a promo film at Hollywood's Lytton Center,[44] and later included as a featurette on the Rosemary's Baby DVD.

[51] The film inaugurated cinema's growing fascination with demons and related themes in the coming decades,[52] and the novel's author Ira Levin wondered in a 2003 afterword whether his idea for Rosemary's Baby ultimately led to an increase in religious fundamentalism.

The prequel takes place a year prior to the events of Rosemary's Baby, and expands on Terry Gionoffrio - a minor character in the original film.

[64] The film was turned into a parody musical in the ninth episode of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars season 9, titled Rosemarie's Baby Shower.