Jessica Biel is Vera Miles in Alfred Hitchcock And The Making of Psycho
Miles played Lila Crane in the 60's horror/thriller classic, a character who becomes the female lead in the second half of Psycho.
On the day our first look from BBC Films' own Alfred Hitchcock biopic 'The Girl' debuted on the web, Deadline reports that the producers of the other developing movie about Hitch has secured a notable casting. Jessica Biel committed yesterday to play Vera Miles in Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. Miles played Lila Crane in the 60's horror/thriller classic that is Hitch's most popular film, a character who becomes the female lead in the second half of Psycho. Anthony Hopkins is Hitchcock, Helen Mirren his wife Alma Reville, Scarlett Johansson is Janet Leigh and James D'Arcy is Anthony Perkins. Production begins next month. 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. Anvil! The Story of Anvil director Sacha Gervasi helms based on John McLaughlins script (he co-wrote Black Swan). If the film wants to be classified for inclusion to next years Oscars then it will need to be released in the US before 2012 is out and we have to believe that is the idea. In many ways Alfred Hitchcock And The Making of Psycho is a prequel building into BBC Films' own movie The Girl, which has Toby Jones as Hitchcock and Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren and is set during the making of Hitch's Psycho follow-up The Birds and about Hitch's unrequited sexual advances to his leading lady.