Robert Downey Jr. to headline Paramount Pictures’ Vertigo remake: report

Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1958 psychological thriller, has reportedly been given a remake. According to Deadline, Paramount Pictures has acquired the remake rights to the film, starring Robert Downey Jr. (Zodiac, The Avengers) headlining the cast. In it, he’ll reprise the role of late actor James Stewart from the original film — a retired detective with acrophobia, aka a fear of heights. Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight is attached to write the Vertigo remake, produced by Davis Entertainment in conjunction with Susan Downey and Robert’s own company, Team Downey.

Downey has been in acting since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, which turned out to be the second-highest-grossing film of all time, with re-releases. He then became an executive producer and starred in Dolittle, which was considered a box office bomb, followed by an appearance in a Netflix documentary “Sr.”, examining her father’s career and relationships. Downey will next appear in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer like Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Then there’s The Sympathizer TV series directed by Park Chan-wook for HBO and A24 in the works, with Downey attached to star and executive produce.

Directed by Hitchcock, Vertigo follows former San Francisco police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson (Stewart), who retires from the force due to a crippling fear of heights, aggravated by vertigo. When the detective is hired by an acquaintance to follow his wife (Kim Novak) and uncover her strange behavior, Scottie finds himself increasingly obsessed with her. His acrophobia, however, makes him powerless when one day he fails to prevent the woman from plunging to death. Based on the 1954 French novel From the Dead, Hitchcock’s adaptation went on to inspire the 1965 Tamil film Kalangarai Vilakkam, and much later Brian De Palma’s Obsession. Although Vertigo received mixed reviews upon its initial release, it quickly became cult, ranking in the top 10 in a 1982 survey conducted by the British Film Institute’s publication Sight and Sound. It is now widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.

A few other Hitchcock films have been remade before, ranging from Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot reinterpretation of Psycho to Michael Douglas-directed A Perfect Murder, which is a version of 1954’s Dial M for Murder. , this would be the first time we’ve gotten a full remake from an American studio. Earlier this week, Vertigo remake writer Knight was tapped to pen the untitled Star Wars movie that Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Ms. Marvel) is attached to direct. Original screenwriters Damon Lindelof (Lost) and Justin Britt-Gibson (Counterpart) have officially left the project.

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