BBC to adapt Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 classic The Birds into TV series

Legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds is all set to get a new TV adaptation.

The iconic 1963 film will be remade into a contemporary television drama, which will be written by Irish playwright and writer Conor McPherson, reported DigitalSpy . McPherson has previously worked in projects like Saltwater (2000), The Actors (2003) and The Eclipse (2009), where he has donned the cap of both writer and director.

The original movie featured Tippi Hedren as Melanie Daniels, a wealthy San Francisco socialite, who follows a potential boyfriend to a small town in California where birds have started terrorising the residents.

Instead of California, the BBC version will be set in rural Cornwall, where a farmhand and his community is being terrorised by flocks of birds and seagulls shortly after the end of World War II.

Despite a few noticeable changes, the story will remain true to Daphne du Maurier’s original 1952 novella of the same name.

Much contrary to the popular Hitchcock movies known for overtly horror themes, primarily using extraneous elements, The Birds stands out as a film which had nothing of that sort, but just the birds on a killing spree without revealing anything about the cause of the menace. It is left for the audience to ponder upon, which catapults the chilling nerve-wracking sensation of Hitchcock movies to another level.

The BBC show will be produced by Heyday Television, which is owned by David Heyman who has previously backed mammoth projects like Harry Potter (all the eight films), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Gravity to name a few.

(With inputs from PTI)