In this week’s film development news, Paramount Pictures has acquired the rights to remake Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller Vertigo, with Robert Downey Jr. expected to take over in the lead role. The remake will be written by screenwriter Steven Knight, who is also writing one of Disney and Lucasfilm’s top secret Star Wars movies.
Director Adam McKay’s next social satire, Average Height, Average Build, will star Robert Pattinson as a serial killer who uses political lobbyists to change laws in order to make it easier for him to kill. The film will also feature Robert Downey Jr., Amy Adams, Danielle Deadwyler, and Forest Whitaker.
Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, James Acaster, and Emily Alyn Lind are set to join the cast of the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife sequel, which will introduce new characters and shift the hunting of ghosts back to New York City.
Rachel Zegler will star in Kyle Mooney’s upcoming film Y2K, which is set on New Year’s Eve, 1999, as two high school losers crash a big party while the crowd counts down to the new millennium. The film will also feature Jaeden Martell, Julian Dennison, Mason Gooding, and several others.
Kate McKinnon has landed the lead role in an ambitious, centuries-spanning sci-fi movie called In the Blink of an Eye, directed by Academy Award winner Andrew Stanton. The ensemble cast will include Rashida Jones and Daveed Diggs.
Anne Hathaway will star in A24’s pop music drama Mother Mary, which will feature original songs written by Charli XCX and Jack Antonoff. The film will reunite A24 with director David Lowery.
Destry Allyn Spielberg’s feature film directorial debut will be a pandemic thriller called Please Don’t Feed the Children, starring Michelle Dockery as a group of orphans in a near future after the adult population of the United States has been ravaged by a viral outbreak.
Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are producing a biopic about themselves, directed by Kristian Mercado, a young filmmaker who is also developing a reboot of the MTV action franchise Aeon Flux.
Cameron Crowe will direct a musical biopic about singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, with whom he has a decades-long friendship.
Netflix has hired screenwriter Jon Spaihts to write their planned live-action adaptation of the hit video game series Gears of War. Spaihts has a resume full of special effects-heavy action movies like Dune, Doctor Strange, and Prometheus.