Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo Remake Being Developed, Robert Downey Jr. Potentially Starring

Robert Downey Jr. is getting Vertigo in a remake of the acclaimed Alfred Hitchcock-directed 1958 film that starred James Stewart. The two-time Oscar-nominated actor is eyeing Stewart’s role of John “Scottie” Ferguson, an acrophobic San Francisco detective caught in a dizzying web of mistaken identity, passion, and murder. Peaky Blinders and See creator Steven Knight — who recently signed on to take over a Damon Lindelof-scripted Star Wars movie at Disney’s Lucasfilm — is writing the remake that’s been preemptively acquired by Paramount Pictures, which distributed Hitchcock’s hypnotic thriller before Universal Studios acquired the rights from the filmmaker’s estate in the 1980s. Deadline first reported the news.

The Iron Man and Avengers actor is attached to star and produce the film with his wife and producing partner Susan Downey for Team Downey, behind HBO Max’s Perry Mason, Netflix’s Sweet Tooth, and the Downey vehicle Dolittle. Davis Entertainment’s John Davis (The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and TV’s Magnum P.I. reboots) and John Fox (The Blacklist, The Equalizer reboot) are producing the remake. 

According to Deadline, the Hitchcock Estate favored Paramount as the studio for the Vertigo remake. Along with the original film, the storied movie studio produced Hitchock’s Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Trouble with Harry (1955), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and distributed the Master of Suspense’s 1960 horror thriller Psycho.

After ending his 11-year tenure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, Downey returned to theaters with his Doctor Dolittle adaptation, Dolittle, which did little at the worldwide box office. The Oscar-nominated Chaplin and Tropic Thunder actor most recently produced and appeared in the Netflix documentary Sr. about his father, filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., and next appears as part of a star-studded ensemble in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer this summer.

Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which is now considered one of the filmmaker’s greatest cinematic achievements, also starred Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, and Henry Jones. Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor wrote the Hitchcock-produced adaptation of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s 1954 French mystery novel, D’entre les morts (The Living and the Dead). The original Vertigo is currently streaming on Turner Classic Movies.