Armie Hammer and Lily James to remake Rebecca, inviting all sorts of unflattering comparisons to the original

Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger) and Lily James (Cinderella) are both veterans of the unnecessary remake game, having similarly spent their early careers retreading someone else’s more beloved and celebrated work. It’s fitting, then, that the two of them are gearing up for a remake of Rebecca, that classic story of personal envy, and also how all housekeepers are secretly sexually obsessive and evil.

Given the way Daphne du Maurier’s novel is famously about being compared unfavorably to a distressingly similar predecessor, we can only wait to see how James and Hammer—who’ll be playing “the second Mrs. de Winter” and her husband, respectively—are haunted by the specter of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 Best Picture winner, just as we, in turn, are haunted by this Newswire from 2012, which already did all the jokes about how a remake of Rebecca is doomed to endless unfavorable comparisons to the original, and better than we ever could. It’s a vicious cycle, is what we’re getting at, just waiting for a particularly nasty/devoted housekeeper to come along and send the whole thing spiraling down toward suicide town. (Which is also, now that we think about it, kind of what director Ben Wheatley’s recent High-Rise was also all about, albeit without the malevolent housekeeper part.)

In any case, Tilda Swinton (or maybe Olivia Colman) as Mrs. Danvers, or GTFO.