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Paramount remaking Vertigo w/ Robert Downey Jr


Here's the Deadline link with the story:

https://deadline.com/2023/03/vertigo-remake-robert-downey-jr-steven-knight-alfred-hitchcock-james-stewart-paramount-pictures-davis-entertainment-team-downey-1235308636/

[The comments on the Deadline story are hilarious.]

The Guardian's re-report of the Deadline story:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/mar/23/vertigo-remake-hitchcock-robert-downey-jr
includes a link to the Guardian's eye-rolling review of the Vertigo video game released last year.

Vertigo is so alive in modern film culture and gets partially remade quite profitably every decade across world film culture, e.g., most recently S Korea's Decision to Leave (2022) (and see before that things like Germany's Phoenix (2014), Mulholland Drive (2001), Lost Highway (1997), even Basic Instinct (1992), not to mention 3 or 4 De Palma films including Femme Fatale, Body Double, and Obsession) so a full remake seems ill-advised. Not only will it have to contend with being constantly compared to one of the greatest films ever, there's almost certainly more money to be made by writing an original that nonetheless has Vertigo as a big, overt influence. That way you can explicitly bounce off of all the films that have already followed in Vert's footsteps. Hell, I'd pay money to see Downey Jr in De Palma's latest Vertigo-esque effort.

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Vertigo is so alive in modern film culture and gets partially remade quite profitably every decade across world film culture, e.g., most recently S Korea's Decision to Leave (2022) (and see before that things like Germany's Phoenix (2014) and Mulholland Drive (2001), even Basic Instinct, and 3 or 4 De Palma films including Femme Fatale, Body Double, and Obsession) so a full remake seems ill-advised.

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I will note in passing that several of the DePalma quasi-remakes "sexed up" the Vertigo plot(especially Body Double with its porn world setting), but not Obsession, which heads for the Vertigo ending with a queasy twist to WHY "Judy looks like Madeline." And of course, Basic Instinct summons forth Vertigo with Sharon Stone's hair and white outfit and a San Francisco/pennisula setting, but goes hard R on the sex(thank you!) and pretty dumb on the script (Psycho is somewhat referenced with a REALLY BAD version of the Psycho shrink -- his dialogue is terrible.)

I greet this news of an RDJ Vertigo with some resignation....and some doubt.

Paramount has previously announced -- years ago - a remake of To Catch A Thief(set in Miami) and more recently a FEMALE remake with Gal Gadot kinda sorta/attached.

Back when the 1998 Van Sant Psycho came out (25 years ago!) Michael Bay announced a remake of The Birds. Naomi Watts was always attached as a new Melanie, and George Clooney's name was bandied about as a new Mitch(with no sense of his REALLY committing.) 25 years later -- no "Birds."

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The slow first hour of The Birds -- and its melodrama--meets art film tone -- probably helped kill the remake. Vertigo is rather like The Birds in its slowness and artiness -- Psycho and NXNW in between move a LOT faster and are "action packed"(even when the action is slasher murders.)

Oh, I forgot one: Warners has been threatening to remake Strangers on a Train since 2000 or so -- Denzel Washington was attached at one point because his favorite pop director Antoine Fuqua was attached to direct. I"ve always wondered: would Denzel ahve played Guy...or Bruno? (Training Day by Fuqua suggests: maybe Bruno.)

So a lot of unmade Hitchcock remakes litter the bloody floor. But a few got made -- Van Sant's Psycho, a sad and terrible TV movie of Rear Window with Chris Reeve (who, we knew, would NEVER get out of that chair.) A twist-laden starry remake of Dial M for Murder(Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow) which one critic called "A three-star remake of a three-star original."

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Not only will it have to contend with being constantly compared to one of the greatest films ever, there's almost certainly more money to be made by going original but using Vertigo as a big influence and also bouncing off of all the films that have already followed in Vert's footsteps. Hell, I'd pay money to see Downey Jr in De Palma's latest Vertigo-esque effort.

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Well, we shall see. Van Sant at least had the respect to give HIS Psycho the original Bernard Herrmann score(reorchestrated by Danny Elfman.) Herrmann is to Vertigo as he is to Psycho: an indisputable part of the effect of the movie. No Herrmann, no Vertigo. No Herrmann, no Psycho.

Maybe Danny Elfman is game again...

Robert Downey Jr. has had an interesting recent career. Iron Man made him a billion-gazillionaire. Doctor Doolittle didn't make a dime. Is he REALLY a star? (I think so, he's got the combo of voice, line delivery, timing and good looks to rise above many others.)

We will get a younger(looking), less sad sack version of Scottie, I suppose. James Stewart just lacked sex appeal; the age thing was OK for the yearning of the story; but not the looks and voice.

We shall see...

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