Mentioning that you’re going to attempt a remake of an Alfred Hitchcock film never really goes down well with film fans. Just ask Gus Van Sant.
But the new trend is not to tackle the film itself, but rather to fashion a new take on the novel Hitch based his movies on. The team currently working on The Birds are taking that tact, and it’s a plan also being used by David Ondaatje for The Lodger.
He’s adapted Marie Belloc Lowndes’ novel, which Hitch made into 1927’s The Lodger. Ondaatje’s version will update the plot to modern-day Los Angeles and find Alfred Molina’s detective tracking an unknown killer while an emotionally troubled landlady (Hope Davis) deals with her odd lodger. Want to guess that the two plotlines end up converging?
