When Paramount announced in 2023 that it had secured the rights to remake Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece, the news felt less like confirmation and more like provocation. To remake Hitchcock is almost heresy; to remake Vertigo is to flirt with the impossible. And yet, the project remains alive — and, according to Steven Knight, it’s literally “occupying his waking hours.”

In a new interview from March 2025, Knight confirmed that the script is actively being written, describing the process as both fascinating and borderline insane. “It’s swirling around in my head as we speak. I’m having flashbacks to about an hour ago when I was writing,” he said. “People consider Vertigo the best film ever made. So you’d have to be an idiot to adapt it — and that’s what I am.” The self-deprecation lands as humor, but also as honesty: he compares the task to “diffusing a Second World War time bomb,” where every wire in Hitchcock’s original plot could explode if touched the wrong way.

The encouraging news is that Knight finally has the time to focus on it. With his Peaky Blinders feature film now in post-production and his departure from Lucasfilm’s planned Star Wars: Rey Return project, the British screenwriter has turned his full attention to Vertigo. At the same time, he’s also steering the upcoming James Bond revival — a workload Hitchcock himself might have called an exquisite form of madness.

Robert Downey Jr. remains attached to star and produce, taking on the role once played by James Stewart: John “Scottie” Ferguson, the retired detective haunted by both his vertigo and an unattainable obsession. Downey, however, is also returning to another cinematic universe — Marvel’s, where he’s expected to appear as Doctor Doom — a commitment that will likely delay any production timeline for Vertigo.

Another intriguing detail: Knight may be drawing inspiration not only from Hitchcock’s film but from the original 1954 novel, D’entre les morts, by French authors Boileau-Narcejac — the same duo behind Les Diaboliques. That choice suggests a more psychological, perhaps darker interpretation, one closer to the novel’s essence: the delirium of desire and the feminine erasure that turns devotion into domination.

With no director yet attached and no production date in sight, Vertigo remains in the depths of development. Knight’s enthusiasm implies the script is taking shape, but it’s unlikely we’ll see this new version before 2027.

And maybe that’s fitting. Like its source material, this Vertigo exists between longing and illusion — between the impulse to revive and the danger of replacement. The story has always been about a gaze trying to recreate what it lost, about love dissolving into obsession and reflection. Any attempt to remake it risks the same fate as the man at its center: mistaking the pursuit of perfection for the fear of emptiness.