Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ Getting All-New Adaptation

A common theme in the world of genre movies and television is that, when you feel like all the ideas have been done before, make a new adaptation of a familiar property in hopes of at least gaining name recognition. One of Alfred Hitchcock’s defining films, The Birds, is the next property to get the remake treatment, with the BBC developing their own adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier novella from 1952, according to Digital Spy.

In the story, a wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small oceanside community upon which flocks of birds descend. As mysterious as their arrival and attack on the town’s citizens begin, the attacks mysteriously end to leave the community in peace.

The new TV series will feature a few updates to the original 1963 movie, which includes the location, as it will no longer take place in California but in the rural British countryside. The storyline will also take place shortly after the Second World War, which fits much more closely in line with the original novella.

Although it wasn’t a remake, a sequel to the film was made as a TV movie in 1994, The Birds II: Land’s End. The TV movie follows virtually the same plot, featuring an oceanside community that mysteriously gets attacked by birds, with the only connection to the original film being an older resident who claims to have remembered a similar attack taking place in northern California.

While attempting any remake of an iconic filmmaker like Alfred Hitchcock might immediately seem blasphemous, one of the biggest recent hits in the world of horror television has been Bates Motel, which is inspired by both the film Psycho and the novel upon which the film was based. Unlike Bates Motel, however, the upcoming The Birds series will most likely be a limited series as opposed to a show with multiple seasons, as the story can only extend so far.

Irish playwright and writer Conor McPherson is slated to write the series, having previously developed the novella into a play in 2009.