Michael Bay will remake Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds'

Michael Bay is set to produce an upcoming remake of The Birds.

The Transformers director will certainly face high expectations as he takes on Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1963 film. Bay will produce the movie, while Dutch filmmaker Diederik Van Rooijen will direct. The project is a collaboration between Universal, Mandalay Pictures, and Bay's production company Platinum Dunes.

The film was loosely based on a 1952 short story of the same name, and Naomi Watts will reportedly star as lead character Melanie Daniels, brought to life in the original film by actress Tippi Hedren. The character is a socialite who travels to Bodega Bay, California after an encounter with a man named Mitch Brenner. When she seeks out Brenner in his hometown, the city is suddenly hit with a series of inexplicable and violent attacks by birds.

Remakes have been all the rage these days, but most have fallen short of the originals for critics and audiences alike.

"Why would [they] do that?" original actress Tippi Hedren asked in an interview with MTV. "Can't we find new stories, new things to do? Must you be so insecure that you have to take a film that's become a classic and a great success and then try to do it over?"

The remake is currently in production. Bay's fourth Transformers movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, will debut in theaters on June 27.

[The Guardian] [Variety]