Steven Knight confirms that the remake of Vertigo he’s writing is still active, and he says he’s “an idiot” to try and adapt it.
We first heard a couple of years ago that Robert Downey Jr was sizing up a remake of Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock’s enigmatic and bewitching romantic drama that has captivated audiences ever since its release in 1958.
Downey would likely play the role of Jimmy Stewart’s retired cop, John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson, who becomes infatuated with a mysterious woman whose strange behaviour only deepens his obsession.
Things have been quiet when it comes to news on Vertigo, but with good reason. Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight is penning the script, and he’s been rather busy of late: overseeing a feature film take on his popular Birmingham-based TV show and working on a series drafts on Lucasfilm’s planned return of Rey to the Star Wars franchise.
With the Peaky Blinders movie now deep into the post-production phase and Knight having exited Star Wars, it seems like he’s finally ready to turn his attention to Vertigo.
When asked by The Direct about the project, he had this to say: “It’s swirling around in my head as we speak. I’m having flashbacks to about an hour ago when I was writing. It’s an interesting – I mean, of course, people consider it the best film ever made. So you’d have to be an idiot to adapt it, and so that’s what I am… but, you know, I like stuff like that. I like it. It’s just so weird to try and do it and just give it a go. Taking that plot apart is like diffusing a Second World War time bomb. It’s all over. It’s very complex, but it’s what’s occupying my waking hours.”
It’s interesting to see Knight acknowledge what a fruitless task this adaptation is, on one level at least. While he seems to be enamoured by the process of deconstructing and rebuilding such an intricate story, he freely admits that remaking what is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest films ever made is potentially setting himself up for failure. Audiences will naturally compare the two films.
Perhaps Knight is treating it as an exercise in artistic formalism, as Gus Van Sant did when he remade Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1998. Or maybe he’ll take inspiration from the 1954 source novel by Boileau-Narcejac. Only time will tell, but just like Jimmy Stewart’s character in Hitchcock’s classic, we can feel ourselves being drawn into a strange fascination with the new Vertigo, even if we know it probably won’t end well.
We’ll bring you more on the remake as we hear it.
