Hollywood will go an extended technique to keep away from having to give you a brand new concept, and the studios’ urge for food for remaking something — significantly, something — of their content material libraries that has identify recognition is at present reaching new heights. It doesn’t matter how untouchably iconic the unique film could be; if folks keep in mind it in any manner, it’s grist for the content material mill.
So it’s that we’re at present awaiting collection variations of such different classics as Deadly Attraction, The Day of the Jackal, Metropolis, and Useless Ringers, and theatrical reworkings of Bullitt (from Steven Spielberg, no much less), Nosferatu, and even quintessential 1980s Patrick Swayze actioner Highway Home. Is nothing sacred?
Clearly not: In accordance with Deadline, Paramount is lining up Robert Downey Jr. to star in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller Vertigo. Vertigo, which stars James Stewart as a retired police detective who turns into obsessive about a lady (Kim Novak) he’s employed to observe, is usually seen hanging out with Citizen Kane on the high of lists of the best movies of all time. (Certainly, it gained the 2012 Sight and Sound ballot, breaking Kane’s five-decade run on the high.)
Downey Jr.’s Crew Downey manufacturing firm (Perry Mason, Candy Tooth) will produce. The script will likely be written by the indefatigable Steven Knight, the Peaky Blinders creator (and one of many inventors of the sport present format, Who Desires to be a Millionaire?). Knight was additionally just lately recruited to write down a Star Wars film after the departure of The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof. Knight is a massively prolific screenwriter identified for his willingness to show his hand to nearly any topic: His credit embrace the David Cronenberg thriller Japanese Guarantees, the oddball Princess Diana biopic Spencer, Apple’s sci-fi Jason Momoa car See, a brand new TV adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Nice Expectations, and the ludicrous, so-bad-it’s-good thriller Serenity, which he directed himself. Knight could have a tough needle to string in updating Vertigo, a movie identified for its sophisticated relationship with the male gaze, for contemporary audiences.
Oddly, the Vertigo remake gained’t be the primary official spinoff the Hitchcock movie has had within the 65 years since its launch. That honor goes to, of all issues, a online game: the clunky 2021 Spanish-made journey recreation Alfred Hitchcock — Vertigo, which featured a totally completely different plot, solely loosely impressed by the basic film.
