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EXCLUSIVE: Dreamworks has set Nikolaj Arcel to direct Rebecca, a remake of the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock film. The picture, which has a script draft by Eastern Promises scribe Steven Knight, is being produced by Working Title partners Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner.
Arcel is coming off A Royal Affair, a film that was Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, about the queen of an erratic king of Denmark who carries on with her husband’s private doctor in a dangerous affair. Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg also scripted the Swedish The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Based on the Daphne Du Maurier novel, the original Rebecca focused on a naive young woman who marries a rich widower and moves into his mansion, only to discover that the memory of the first wife is maintaining a grip on her husband and the servants. It starred Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, and it won the Best Picture Oscar. Arcel and Heisterberg are also attached to helm and write an adaptation of the Don Winslow bestseller The Power Of The Dog, which is expected to be their next film. Rebecca would follow.
There will likely be one quick rewrite, but Arcel’s hire has young actresses already beginning to circle the film. Arcel is repped by WME and United Agents.
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Well, the original still holds up and it’s 73 years old.
You don’t remake great films…..no remake will be able to live up to the original. What are people thinking.
I agree. The original film is a classic. It will pale to the original film.
great, another classic film wrecked…
Are they colorizing the original? Re-editing? Adding a Justin Bieber sountrack? Or will the original remain the classic it is, unharmed in any way?
Hitchcock’s Rebecca is iconic, and a cinematic classic. This one will never touch that. I’m already cringing at the young actresses lining up for this.
I’d rather they just re-release the Hitchcock version. It’s untouchable.
Shame on you, Hollywood. Shame on you. Stop remaking classics!
A film adaptation of the Austrian musical would make more sense, at least then it would be guaranteed that it will be a VERY different take instead of just a seemingly completely unnecessary remake. Excellent music, check out the songs in English on Youtube (Rebecca Musical English) !
Knight is a great writer — all the more reason to let him try something original instead of remaking yet another classic.
Nobody is stopping him writing an original. He took this (very well paid) job of his own free will.
What dazzling hubris and stupidity. Why not just put up a billboard saying, “We’re Hacks–we have no ideas of our own”?
“Rebecca” is one of my favorite movies. I re-watch it all the time. There have been a couple of remakes (one for Masterpiece several years ago) and they were pretty good but not like the original. I can’t even imagine any of the young actresses out there doing a good job with this role. They would all overdo the dole-eyed, innocent love thing and it would be comic. I wish they would just stop with the remakes of classics but, whatever, I won’t pay to see it. I’ll just grab a drink and put the original in the DVD player. (I also have a VCR version, just in cast I ever need it.)
by Masterpiece I assume you mean PBS! They don’t ‘make’ anything..they just buy into shows coming out of the UK..mainly the BBC or in the case of the Rebecca remake, w Emilia Fox and Charles Dance, from ITV (and Downton and Mr Selfridge)! You didn’t actually think Rebecca Easton “makess” shows, did you?
One my duties is digging up old movies to see if they have remake potential. You would not believe the boring b&w junk I have to watch. The stupid fashions and dialogue really fries my brain!!! I don’t see why anyone would seriously watch this stuff. They are definitely NOT classics. Nobody cares!!!
Yeah, why watch that boring old crap when there’s another Adam Sandler or Michael Bay masterpiece right around the corner?
We raise the dumbest children on the planet.
Truer words have never been spoken!
So true.
so you seriously got a job or duty by watching the old classics and you don’t see the potential in those great movies, the great stories – thank God there are people like you and the remakes are off your list. Go and get a job with Michael Bay…
This guy has to be kidding, right? He has a JOB watching the old classics and he’s complaining? Someone’s pulling our leg here.
So I bet the scandinavian actress in his last film will play Rebecca. Yawn
Because when they remade Psycho it turned out great?
Scarface
The Thing
The Maltese Falcon
The Thomas Crown Affair
The Magnificant Seven
The Fly
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
A Fistful of Dollars
And now for some bad ones….
The Vanishing – 1993 remake of Spoorloos 1988
Sabrina – 1995
The Jackal – 1997 remake of The Day of the Jackal 1973 a personal favorite.
Lolita – 1997 Should be a crime to remake Kubrik films.
City of Angels – 1998 remake of Wings of Desire – 1987
Planet of the Apes – 2001
Alfie – 2004
Guess Who – 2005 remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner 1967
The Omen – 2006
Pink Panther 2006
Halloween 2007
Friday the 13th – 2009
A Nightmare on Elm Street – 2010
Let Me In – 2010 remake of Let the Right One In 2008
Fright Night – 2011
Total Recall – 2012
Future bad remakes…
OldBoy
Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance
Escape From New York
Pet Sematary
The Birds
The Crow
The Man From Nowhere
The Wild Bunch
The Raid
The Bodyguard…who the heck are they going to use to replace Whitney Houston’s awesome voice?
And I haven’t even mentioned the bad “Reboots and Re-imaginings” in the works.
So isn’t the point that you don’t know until it’s actually released? Given your crystal ball I assume you make a fortune on the lottery every week.
Pathetic! There just seems to be a complete dearth of imagination leading to this seemingly endless string of remakes. If the original is less well known, maybe you take a shot– but as other posters have said, if it ain’t broke, you ain’t gonna fix it. There could easily be an entire Jeopardy category of classics remade badly.
As to the guy whose job it is to watch old movies, feel free to quit.There is a long line of willing participants to take your place and watch the “old black and white junk” in those vaults. Really, there are!
Why is it that classic films get re-made but nobody says let’s re-make this classic novel or famous poem? Let’s spiff up “Ode to a Grecian Urn” for a contemporary audience! I know that certain novels have been written in new and contemporary contexts but that’s probably not so good either potentially exhibiting a troubling lack of imagination – certainly ambition I think.
Plays are re-interpreted all the time.
There are approximately 500 professional covers of Yesterday out there.
No covers, no Hendrix version of Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower.
For F&*ks Sake. That is all.
no one should remake hitchcock. NO ONE.
Fuck it! Never thought I’d say this to DREAMWORKS…to hell with all of those greedy ass mother fuckers. Stephen S? WTF???? How can you do this to Hitchcock??? This is exactly why HOLLYWOOD is dying and why the real, true future of successful movies – creativity will be in the hands and work ethic of digital creators like myself. And anyone backing this remake? Bring up all your data and facts and info claiming how wrong I am and how right Hollywood and DREAMWORKS are.
Wtf seriously!!???? Hitchcock is rolling over in his grave. This is bullshit COME UP
WITH SOME NEW IDEAS HOLLYWOOD AND STOPPING REMAKING SHITTY VERSIONS OF CLASSICS. What’s next “Mr Smith Goes to Washigton 3D” starring Channing Tatum???? Please so over this bullshit
Well it wasn’t “Hitchcock’s Rebecca”. The novel was written by Daphne DuMaurier, and is THE 20th century modern gothic. It has also been remade a couple times – in the 70s with Jeremy Brett and Joanna David, and in the late 90s with Charles Dance and Emilia Fox.
Knight did an excellent job with “Eastern Promises”, truly underrated film. But why not pick up another very good novel that has not been filmed? There are plenty of them out there.
Next up for (Spielberg’s) Dreamworks attempt to undermine Hitchcock’s legacy – 3D remakes of The Birds, Dial M for Murder & North by Northwest…another ‘re-imaging’ of the Anne Heche/Vince Vaughn Psycho masterpiece, a gay-friendly redo of Rope & Strangers, a Vertigo reboot, then a Babel-like ‘foreign countries are our enemy’ update of The Man who knew too Much.
I don’t understand why he’s doing a remake of the film when it is just an adaption of the novel by Daphne Du Maurier? Why not put you own interpretation to it?
“Rebecca” was a novel by Daphne Du Maurier, written in the late 1930s. After that she adapted it for the stage and then the screenplay was adapted from the novel for the Hitchcock movie. Hitchcock also filmed an adaptation of her short story “The Birds” and prior to “Rebecca”, he filmed another Du Maurier novel, “Jamaica Inn.”
So is this another adaptation of the novel (in that case it would not be Hitchcock’s, but Du Maurier’s “Rebecca”), or a shot-by-shot remake of the Hitchcock film, like the remake of “Psycho”?
Horrible idea. Enough with the remakes.
I, for one, welcome the remake… If for the sole purpose that it will bring new viewers to the original because, after all, the remake will pale in comparison.