BBC is remaking Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ as a TV drama

A new remake of The Birds from the producer of the Harry Potter movies will land at the BBC next year.

Daphne du Maurier’s novella was previously adapted for the screen as a hit American movie by Alfred Hitchcock.

The BBC’s new TV adaptation will be produced by Heyday Television, owned by Harry Potter producer David Heyman, and will stick closer to du Maurier’s original 1952 story than Hitchcock’s version.

The 1963 movie transported the tale to California, but the new interpretation of The Birds will be set in rural Cornwall (Poldark county!), where “a farmhand and his community is being terrorised by flocks of birds and seagulls shortly after the end of the Second World War,” Digital Spy reports.

Irish playwright and writer Conor McPherson will adapt the novella for the BBC, having previously adapted the story as a play in 2009.

A new movie remake of The Birds was announced in 2007, starring Naomi Watts and directed by Casino Royale director Martin Campbell, but the project was ultimately abandoned.