Hitchcock's The Birds to fly again as an HBO limited series starring Sarah Snook

Leftovers executive producer Tom Spezialy and Harry Potter EP David Heyman are adding some new elements to their modern-day adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s novella. The pilot episode, written by Spezialy, apparently throws a murder mystery and some new characters, particularly a new protagonist, Myra Massey (Snook), into the feeder. According to Deadline, Spezialy’s pilot script follows Myra after a bitter custody battle. Returning home with her daughter, she begins secretly investigating a childhood friend’s disappearance, and that’s when the birds start pecking around. Responding to more criticisms no one has ever had about The Birds, the show will fill several episodes with an additional killer subplot and, oh, yeah, mysterious bird attacks that are “linked to the crime.”

Aside from the aforementioned sequel, Birds remakes have been a non-starter for Hollywood and abroad. Director Martin Campbell almost made it his Casino Royale follow-up with Naomi Watts, but the film never materialized. There was also an attempt to remake it as a BBC series in 2017, but it never got off the ground. Maybe they should’ve included a decades-old mystery for someone to solve amid being pecked to death.