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Dutch helmer Diederik Van Rooijen has signed on to direct the re-imagining of the Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds, which Platinum Dunes and Mandalay Pictures are producing for Universal.??
Van Rooijen is best known as the writer and director of the Dutch television series Penoza, which has been remade for U.S. audiences as ABC’s Red Widow. He also directed in his homeland the thriller Taped, which has an English-language adaptation in the works at Sony, with Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher (The Great Gatsby) producing. The Birds would mark his studio feature debut.
Naomi Watts has been loosely attached to star in the film for years, but is no longer involved. Jonathan Herman penned the most recent version of the screenplay.
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Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller are producing the re-imagining via Platinum Dunes, while Peter Guber and David Zelon are producing for Mandalay Pictures.
Starring Tippi Hedren, the 1963 version of The ????Birds was released by Universal and featured hordes of sinister flying creatures, spawning the “nature on the attack” horror sub-genre.
In the past, the studio has stressed that the redo will owe more to the Daphne du Maurier short story than the Hitchcock version of the film.?
Van Rooijen is repped by WME and Bloom Hergott.
E-mail: Tatiana.Siegel@THR.com
Twitter: @TatianaSiegel27
E-mail: Borys.Kit@THR.com
Twitter: @Borys_Kit
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