Deadline is reporting on a new collaboration between Gillian Flynn and her Gone Girl big screen cohorts, David Fincher and Ben Affleck. Apparently, the trio are deep in talks to craft a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal mystery, Strangers On A Train. Simply titled Strangers, this updated take on the Hitchcockian classic is set up at Warner Bros., with Affleck producing under his Pearl St. banner.
Classed as a contemporary take on the original – itself an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel – Strangers will be set in the present day and revolve around Affleck’s character. In the 1951 film, two strangers meet on a train and enter into a ‘social contract’; they will each murder a person on behalf of the other so neither of them will get caught. A twist on that premise will see Affleck tackle a slightly different role than the one first played by Farley Granger. Instead of a tennis pro, he will play “a movie star–in the middle of a campaign for an Oscar during awards season – whose private plane breaks down and is given a ride to LA on another plane by a wealthy stranger.” Presumably his interaction with this stranger will be where the murderous plots are introduced.
In terms of tone and theme, this reimagined concept overlaps with the ideas explored in Gone Girl, making this project a perfect fit for Fincher to direct, Flynn to script and Affleck to star. Their work on the split-narrative headscratcher reaped huge rewards for Fox, after the film collected $350 million worldwide from a $60 million budget.
The proposed plan for the movie is for it to shoot later this year. Once Affleck has completed work on the Dennis Lehane adaptation Live By Night, in which he will star and direct, the following gap in his schedule is being organized to fit in Strangers before he flies off for the first Justice League instalment. Prior to that, Fincher and Flynn are collaborating this year on the HBO series Utopia, with him behind the camera for a run of episodes all penned by the scribe.
