alfred hitchcock presents Tagged Articles at Cinematical

"Good eeevening." The last we heard about writer/director Ryan Murphy's Alfred Hitchcock biopic was back in February. At the time it was just speculation, but today MTV Movies Blog has confirmation -- Anthony Hopkins will play Hitch. They've even got a clip of him doing the voice over there. I think it's pretty solid casting, but Hopkins better start eating! The February report mentioned Helen Mirren possibly stepping into the role of Hitchcock's wife and lifelong creative collaborator, Alma Reville, but that casting is not confirmed yet. The film is expected to be called Alfred Hitchcock Presents and will detail Hitchcock's experiences making the 1960 classic Psycho. At the time, the screenplay was seen as far too dark for mass audiences, and Hitch faced quite a few hurdles to bring the project to the big screen.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents will be written and directed by Ryan Murphy. I am a fan of Murphy's FX series Nip/Tuck, particularly the first few seasons. But any faith I had in his filmmaking went out the window with the absolutely dreadful Running with Scissors, one of my least favorite movies of 2006. Hopefully, he can redeem himself here. I can't say for certain when we'll see Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as Murphy is currently very busy in both the television and film worlds. On TV, he's overseeing Nip/Tuck and an upcoming F/X drama about a transsexual father called 4 oz. On the big screen, he's working on the Tricky Dick flick Dirty Tricks, starring Brad Pitt and Meryl Streep, with Jim Broadbent as Nixon, and Need with Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts. So it's conceivable that we won't get to see AFP for a few years. Hey, now that the wheels are in motion on the story of how Hitchcock's Psycho came to be, is it too much to ask to get a making-of biopic for Gus Van Sant's critically acclaimed remake? I kid, I kid.

While Ryan Murphy's Running with Scissors wasn't the most beloved piece of cinema to come out recently, he's had his share of TV success. He wrote most of the episodes to the doomed-yet-loved series Popular, and more recently he's been penning his heart out on Nip/Tuck. Undaunted by the less-than-stellar response to Scissors, he's already got the Kidman/Watts flick, Need, and the star-studded Dirty Tricks on the pike. Apparently, he isn't busy enough, and it appears that he's going to be taking on another media name, one a bit more wide-spread -- the master of mystery, Alfred Hitchcock.

According to Hollywood Elsewhere, Murphy will be directing Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which details the hurdles and roadblocks the iconic director had to go through to make his popular classic, Psycho. (While it wouldn't make most of us blink an eye these days, the director had to struggle to make something so dark and violent during the time of Donna Reed.) But that's not all -- rumors are also circulating about the cast. It seems that Anthony Hopkins, who has already taken on the likes of other visionaries such as Pablo Picasso and Leo Tolstoy, might star as Hitchcock, and Helen Mirren might co-star as his wife and collaborator, Alma Reville.

This could be great, or a big waste of time. Murphy has had questionable feature success thus far, the Psycho remake was terrible and similar projects have struggled (RKO 281). Do we want to see Hitchcock's behind-the-scenes trials and tribulations, or is this Psycho story best left in the past?

[via Chud]