Some remakes just sting more than others. I mean, who cares if someone remakes Weird Science. Why the heck not. But when you start talking about remaking Hitchcock, well I know we should all be numb to this sort of Hollywood re-treading abuse by now, but dammit it doesn't still feel horribly wrong.
In this case at least, the Hitchcock being remade isn't one of his more prominent films. I'd throw myself off a ledge if I had to write a story about Uwe Boll remaking Rear Window for instance. Instead, what we have here is a remake of Hitch's 1927 silent film The Lodger, being done by writer/director David Ondaatje.
The original is based on a same-named novel by Marie Adelaide Lowndes, a fictional take on Jack the Ripper. Production Weekly says Ondaatje's version will involve two converging plotlines. The first will focus on the relationship between a paranoid landlord and her tenant. The second will entangle itself in the personal and professional problems of detective Chandler Manners, hot on Ripper's trail.
So maybe you're wondering who this Ondaatje fellow is and what gives him the right to meddle in Hitch. So far, he's a nobody. He's directed a short, and he's been involved in a Hitchcock documentary, which he says inspired his short. However, if you must remake a Hitchcock movie, an obscure silent flick from early in his career seems like good fodder. While you're at it, why not have the guy making it be a protégé of the filmmaking master. Sounds like if nothing else, Ondaatje fits that bill.
