Sixty-three years after Alfred Hitchcock’s original, The Birds is being remade as a limited series. Emmy winner Sarah Snook starring and Tom Spezialy writing. The package is currently being pitched to networks and streamers, billed as “a visceral, present-day reimagining” of the 1963 horror classic.
Snook plays Myra Massey, a traveling magistrate who returns to her isolated Alaskan hometown for a routine presumptive death hearing. She expects a simple cold case and instead finds her childhood friend’s bullet-ridden body. When Myra is forced to step outside her role as judge to untangle the mystery, nature itself turns hostile with a wave of bird attacks.
Shifting Focus to Avoid the Damsel in Distress Plot Line
The series is also changing the approach to its lead character. It is moving away from the film’s damsel-in-distress Melanie Daniels, played by Tippi Hedren. Instead, the focus shifts toward Myra Massey. She has to rely on herself because no one is coming to her rescue.
Snook is a real heavyweight. She won a Tony for the play The Picture of Dorian Gray, and she won the 2025 AACTA award for Best Actress for the Oscar-nominated animated feature Memoir of a Snail. Her Peacock series All Her Fault earned two Golden Globe nominations for Best Limited Series and Best Actress in a Limited Series.
Spezialy has impressive credentials to boot. He served as an executive producer on HBO’s Watchmen, sharing in its 2020 Emmy win for Outstanding Limited Series. He also produced the critically acclaimed series The Leftovers. His most recent high-profile project is Prime Video’s upcoming Blade Runner 2099, where he serves as an executive producer on the TV adaptation of the sci-fi franchise.
Heyday Television and UIS previously collaborated on 2024’s Peacock limited series Apples Never Fall, starring Annette Bening and Sam Neill. Heyman is also serving as an executive producer on the upcoming Harry Potter series set to premiere on HBO Max. He previously produced the original blockbuster film franchise.
This is NOT a Remake of Hitchcock’s “The Birds”
At a discussion at SXSW London last June, Sue Gibbs, Head of Development at Heyday Television, clarified the series is not adapting Hitchcock’s film. “We’re going back to the source material, the Daphne du Maurier novella and using that as inspiration,” she said. Gibbs added that at its heart, the show is “looking at when nature turns on you,” noting the theme is “very timely” given climate change.
Du Maurier‘s 1952 short story was originally set in Cornwall, while Hitchcock relocated the action to Bodega Bay, California. This new version plants the story firmly in Alaska, Spezialy’s home state.
Executive producing are Spezialy, Snook, Heyman via Heyday TV, and Jennifer Gabler Rawlings of Omni Artists.
Previous attempts to remake The Birds never progressed beyond development. This included a film starring Naomi Watts announced in 2007 and a BBC series announced in 2017. This time, Snook is attached to the project. The high-profile team of Heyman and Spezialy is also behind it. Consequently, the project is making strong progress as it heads to market.
