She lost out on portraying the glamorous icon she is so often compared with to Michelle Williams, who was duly Oscar nominated for "My Week With Marilyn", but not to be outdone Scarlett Johansson has attached herself to play another famous star of Hollywood yesteryear. Variety say Johansson will play one of horror's early scream queens in "Alfred Hitchcock & The Making of Psycho", stepping into the shoes of Janet Leigh who was the iconic shower victim of Hitchcock's most popular film "Psycho". Just like "My Week in Marilyn", this fact based drama chronicles the making of a movie, with veterans Anthony Hopkins (as Hitch) and Helen Mirren (as his wife Alma Reville) already set in the lead roles. Brit thesp James D'Arcy has also boarded as Anthony Perkins, the actor who gave his most memorable screen performance as Norman Bates, the creepy owner of the Bates Motel that Janet Leigh's character never checks out from. D'Arcy looks quite a lot like Perkins and it looks to be interesting casting on paper... Set in 1960, the movie finds Hitchcock at a troubling crossroads in his career having lost some of his audience with "Vertigo" (amazing to think that now) and the struggle he had to convince a studio to finance and distribute his low-rent horror/thriller, for which nobody believed audiences would turn up for such a violent, psychological tale. Paramount had so little faith in the project that they gave Hitch a paltry budget and just let him get on with it without supervision but this would prove to be the best thing that could have happened to cinema. Under pressure, Hitchcock crafted an absolute masterpiece using the limited resources he had at his disposable to the hilt, finding creative and unique storytelling ways to hide the cracks and build his own sets and collaborate with his own crew from his tv show "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". The film will mostly tackle the strain the production of Psycho had on Hitchs marriage to his wife and regular collaborator Alma Reville. The tale is chronicled in many books but this film will focus most heavily on Stephen Rebellos, which lends the film its title. Although set mostly during the making of Psycho, a previous draft also chronicled the real life crimes that inspired Robert Blochs novel and also briefly Hitchs later career but I wonder if they have made that subplot minimal to focus on Hitch. Many have pointed at this project being Scarlett's biggest awards bait yet and it does sound like the kind of "movie about movie stars" that the Academy usually like to recognise. I believe Hopkins' Hitchcock is the leading role with Mirren's Alma Reville and ScarJo's Janet Leigh about equal parts. Anvil! The Story of Anvil director Sacha Gervasi helms based on John McLaughlin's script (he co-wrote Black Swan) and production begins in April. If the film wants to be classified for inclusion to next year's Oscars then it will need to be released in the US before 2012 is out and we have to believe that is the idea.