Here’s some unexpected news for your Thursday: Deadline have exclusively revealed today that Paramount Pictures has preemptively acquired a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic psychological thriller Vertigo, with Robert Downey Jr. eyeing the lead.
Deadline also tells us that the script will be written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, with Davis Entertainment’s John Davis and John Fox, and Team Downey’s Robert and Susan Downey producing.
If successful, Downey Jr. will be taking on the role of former detective John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson, played by James Stewart in Hitchcock’s 1958 original. The original was based on the 1954 novel D’entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Boileau-Narcejac, and follows Ferguson after a line of duty trauma forces him to retire and leaves him with a fear of heights and dizzying vertigo.
The Hitchcock Estate reportedly favored Paramount as the studio for the Vertigo remake, as it was the home of the original.
Vertigo is widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time (and has been named THE greatest on more than one occasion), not least because it was the first to use the dolly zoom, forever changing the face of cinema (and horror) as we know it.
The as-of-now untitled Vertigo film will join a long line of Hitchcock remakes including Gus Van Sant’s 1998 version of Psycho and 2007’s Disturbia which is loosely based on Rear Window. It’s a daunting task to remake the works of one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema, but we’re definitely keen to see RDJ’s spin on it! Stay tuned for more updates as we get them.
