Sarah Snook Set To Star In New HBO Remake Of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds

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Here's everything we know about the new adaptation

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Sarah Snook is fast securing her status as one of the most talented actresses of our age. From her Emmy-winning performance as Shiv Roy in Succession to her spellbinding (plus Olivier and Tony-winning) turn in the one-woman adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, she has critics and audiences alike dazzled by her acting chops. And now it seems she has another award-worthy role in the works as she’s set to star in and executive produce a new HBO mini series based on Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds – here’s everything we know so far.

What Is The Birds About?

When you mention The Birds, the first thing that springs to mind for most (other than, you know, actual birds) is Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal 1963 film about a series of aggressive and unexplained avian attacks. Revolutionising the monster movie genre, the film pioneered radical sound design and established an unresolved, apocalyptic style of natural horror that has shaped the genre ever since.

Tippi Hedren, who played protagonist Melanie Daniels in the original film, secured the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year. The film went on to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2016, and frequently crops up in ‘greatest films of all time’ and ‘must watch before you die’ lists.

One of those rare cases of the film being more beloved than the book on which it’s based, it is a little-known fact that Hitchcock’s masterpiece was inspired by the 1952 novella by Daphne Du Maurier of the same name, published as part of her collection The Apple Tree. Hitchcock previously adapted Du Maurier’s gothic masterpiece Rebecca in 1940 – his first American film and only Best Picture Oscar winner.

Despite finding inspiration from Du Maurier’s The Birds, Hitchcock played fast and loose with the source material. Where Du Maurier’s story is set in a rural Cornish farming community shortly after World War II, Hitchcock transposes the tale to Bodega Bay on the Northern California coast in the early 1960s. He also swapped out Du Maurier’s core cast of characters, a disabled water veteran named Nat Hocken and his family, for wealthy socialite Melanie Daniels alongside lawyer Mitch Brenner, and his family.

Though Hitchcock kept the core premise of unprovoked, mass avian attacks, he largely discarded the book’s narrative structure and incorporated real-life reports of aggressive bird behavior from California into his script.

This new HBO series is set to reimagine the premise once more. Set in the present day, the re-telling will see Snook star as protagonist Myra. Escaping a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband, Myra returns home with her young daughter, secretly probing a childhood friend’s suspicious disappearance. With a killer on the loose and personal threats mounting, she fights to protect her daughter against a terrifying new menace: vicious, deadly bird attacks inexplicably tied to the crime.

Tom Specialzy (who executive produced Watchmen and The Leftovers) has written the pilot and David Heyman (who is executive producer on the new Harry Potter series) is also on the team.

There have been two previous, and failed attempts, to readapt The Birds. In 2007 there were plans for a new feature film remake, in which Naomi Watts was set to star and Martin Campbell to direct. There was also a BBC series announced in 2017 written by Irish playwright Conor McPherson, which also never saw the light of day.