He has played real life historical icons Richard Nixon, John Adams, Lt. William Bligh and even once upon a time in a t.v. movie Adolf Hitler - but there's one pair of formidable shoes that legendary Oscar winning British actor
Anthony Hopkins has wanted to fill for quite some time. Who is this giant figure of a man you say? Well it's
Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense. You've probably heard of him?
The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Hopkins has begun talks to star as the famous director in
Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, a 60's set drama that was resurrected this week with Sacha Gervasi ("Anvil") reportedly close to re-write & direct.
The movie will find 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 Psycho, for whom nobody believed audiences would turn up for such a violent, psychological tale. Of course history tells us they did and in droves! Psycho is lauded as his defining picture (check out our spectacular article on the film,
HERE). Although set mostly during the making of Psycho, the film will also chronicle the real life crimes that inspired Robert Bloch's novel and also briefly Hitch's later career. It will also tackle the strain the production of Psycho had on Hitch's 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 Rebello's, which lends the film it's title. Plenty of material here to fill a movie and with Gervasi on board, a former journalist and factorian of sorts, this one has jumped to the top of our in-development radar. Of course this isn't the first time this particular book has been in development for film and not even the first time with Hopkins attached. A few years ago Ryan Murphy (Eat Pray Love) failed to get the same film off the ground with Hopkins &
Helen Mirren (as Hitch's wife) and based on an earlier 2007 blacklisted screenplay by Black Swan writer John McLaughlin, but it never came to fruition. As long as the re-writes since don't stink and Gervasi doesn't rub Mirren the wrong way and her schedule permits it, one would think she would still be interested in this. Personally, I love biopics like this which are more focused on a small time period in a man's life and not a 'diary of events' from when they were a child, up until their final breathe. Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters is probably the pinnacle of this kind of director biopic but Hitch is easily as interesting a figure as James Whale. Looking forward to this. Wonder who will play Anthony Perkins & Janet Leigh....