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Sarah Snook is headed back to HBO, and this time the birds are coming for her. The network has taken a limited series take on The Birds into development with the Succession Emmy winner attached to star and executive produce, a present-day reimagining of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film set in Alaska with a murder mystery at the center. Deadline broke the news on Tuesday, and Variety confirmed it.
Tom Spezialy, whose credits include The Leftovers and HBO’s Watchmen, wrote the pilot and executive produces alongside David Heyman and Danny Samit of Heyday Television, with Universal Global Television co-producing. The project is in development only, so there is no series order and no premiere date yet.
The Story Moves From Bodega Bay to Alaska
Snook plays Myra Massey, a new character who does not appear in either the film or the Daphne du Maurier story it was loosely based on. According to the official synopsis, Myra is escaping a bitter custody battle when she returns to her isolated Alaskan hometown with her young daughter, secretly probing a childhood friend’s suspicious disappearance. With a killer on the loose and personal threats mounting, she fights to protect her daughter against a new menace: vicious, deadly bird attacks that are inexplicably tied to the crime.
Alaska is Spezialy’s home state. Du Maurier’s 1952 novella was set on the Cornish coast, and Hitchcock relocated it to Bodega Bay, California, for the film.
Two Earlier Remakes Never Got Made
This is at least the third attempt to bring The Birds back to the screen. Universal announced a feature remake in 2007 with Naomi Watts attached, and the BBC developed a series version in 2017 with playwright Conor McPherson writing. Neither made it out of development. The 1963 film did get one follow-up, the 1994 made-for-TV sequel The Birds II: Land’s End, which was widely panned.
The rights to The Birds are controlled by Universal Pictures and the du Maurier estate. Heyman, meanwhile, is also producing HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter series, and Spezialy shared in Watchmen‘s Outstanding Limited Series Emmy in 2020.
Snook Has Done Horror Before
Snook won her Emmy for playing Shiv Roy across four seasons of Succession, but she has genre credits too. She led the 2023 Netflix psychological horror film Run Rabbit Run, playing a fertility doctor whose daughter begins behaving like the sister she lost as a child, and she starred opposite Ethan Hawke in the time-travel thriller Predestination in 2014. Most recently she headlined the Peacock thriller series All Her Fault.
With a pilot script in hand and HBO attached, the next step for The Birds is a series order. If it gets one, it joins a network horror slate that already includes It: Welcome to Derry and The Last of Us, and it brings Snook back to the network where Succession ended its run in 2023.