The team behind Gone Girl are hoping to capitalise on the film’s success by making another thriller.
Deadline Hollywood reports that actor Ben Affleck, director David Fincher and Gone Girl author and screenwriter Gillian Flynn are set to create a new version of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 film, Strangers on a Train.
Based on a 1950 novel by Patricia Highsmith, the original film is predicated on a conversation between two men in which they discuss “swapping” murders – agreeing to kill someone disliked by the other in order to hide the motive.
The new version, retitled Strangers, will feature Affleck as a film star who is offered a lift by a wealthy businessman after his private jet breaks down in the middle of an Oscar campaign.
Affleck will also produce the film. The studio, Warner Brothers, will be anxious to replicate the success of Gone Girl, which grossed $350m worldwide, almost six times the film’s $60m budget.
Strangers is set to be shot at the end of this year after Affleck has starred in and directed his adaptation of the Dennis Lehane book Live By Night, which co-stars Sienna Miller. David Fincher is about to direct the HBO series Utopia, itself a remake of a British series originally shown on Channel 4.
