Ben Wheatley Is Adapting Gothic Classic REBECCA For Netflix

We like Ben Wheatley around these parts, and it's always exciting when the High-Rise and Kill List director has a new project announced. Most of us haven't even seen his latest, Happy New Year Colin Burstead - but Wheatley's onto his next project already.

That project: a new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Gothic classic Rebecca, for Netflix. The novel, which has never gone out of print, follows a newly-wed young lady who travels to her new husband's coastal English estate, only to find his former wife's spectre still haunting the house. Unfamiliar as I am with the novel and its existing adaptations, I'm not the best person to ask about it, but I have it on good authority that it's a stone-cold classic (see below for said authority).

The bar is high for adaptations of this particular novel, given that Alfred Hitchcock's version won the 1940 Academy Award for Best Picture, but we're confident Wheatley will bring something new to the project to differentiate it. Among the new things he's bringing are actors Lily James and Armie Hammer, and Kingsman and X-Men: First Class screenwriter Jane Goldman.

Rebecca is expected to go into production this coming spring. In the meantime, check out Samantha Ladwig's piece on the source material; Meredith Borders' look into the book and film's gothic romance; and Kalyn Corrigan's comparison of Rebecca with Phantom Thread.