Paramount Sets Remake Of Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ As Potential Robert Downey Jr-Starrer; Steven Knight To Write Script & Davis Entertainment To Produce With Team Downey

Mike Fleming Jr
·1 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures has preemptively acquired a remake of the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock-directed psychological thriller Vertigo, with Robert Downey Jr eyeing the James Stewart lead role of the former police detective forced to retire after a line of duty trauma that leaves him with fear of heights and vertigo. The script will be written by Steven Knight, the See and Peaky Blinders creator who just signed on to write a Star Wars film.

Davis Entertainment’s John Davis and John Fox are producing with Team Downey’s Robert and Susan Downey.

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Paramount was the home for the original film, and the Hitchcock Estate favored the studio as the landing spot for this. The original was scripted by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor from the Boileau-Narcejac novel D’entre les morts (From Among the Dead).

After he’s shelved by his affliction, the police detective is hired by an acquaintance to shadow his wife, who he feels is behaving erratically. The film was the first to use the dolly zoom, an in-camera device that distorts perspective to create disorientation and pull audiences into the cop’s acrophobia condition.

Team Downey has Perry Mason in Season Two on HBO, and Downey is starring in the Park Chan-wook-directed The Sympathizer for A24 and HBO. Davis Entertainment is in post on Harold and the Purple Crayon and Uglies.

Downey is repped by WME, Joy Fehily and Hansen Jacobson; Knight is CAA and Nelson Davis.

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