Keck's Exclusives: Lost Vet Goes Psycho

Carlton Cuse | Photo Credits: David Livingston/Getty Images

Former Lost producer Carlton Cuse is currently casting Bates Motel, a 10-episode prequel to the 1960 Hitchcock chiller Psycho, to premiere on A&E in 2013.

In this version, Norman Bates is but a boy of 16 showing peculiarities of what's to come. "His mother, Norma, is in her early forties and very hot," says Cuse. "We didn't get to know her in the movie because she was a corpse...spoiler alert!" In the pilot, the Bates family moves to a rural town in Northern California and purchases a run-down motel. "We're reinterpreting the mythology a bit and we might discover that Norman has a sibling."

But tourists visiting the Universal Studios lot in Los Angeles where the original Psycho house and motel still stand should not expect to see any filming. Adds Cuse, "We're looking to shoot in some red-wooded Northwestern locale, so we'll probably end up building our own version of the iconic Victorian house overshadowing a '60s-era motel. There are a lot of dark secrets in this town. I'm really excited about it." So are we!

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