Michael Bay (producer and director of the stinker The Island) is looking to remake Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Birds. The Birds was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller about a flock of birds that take over a quiet Northern California town. I saw the original a few years back due to it being one of those movies you hear to be so great. It wasn’t terrible, but it’s 45 years old and not wildly exciting. It’s about a renegade flock of birds for crying out loud. If Hitchcock hadn’t been attached to it I’d doubt we’d still be hearing about it these days.

So along comes Michael Bay, who seems to get his bread and butter from stepping on the shoulders of others (The Amityville Horror remake and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake), and decides to redo this film. I didn’t care for the Texas Chainsaw remake since it went for the gross-out path instead of scary and I didn’t bother with Amityville Horror after hearing about it from friends. I guess you could even count The Island as a remake of 1979’s Parts: The Clonus Horror, although they didn’t admit to totally ripping it off down to the very same scenes. Why is Bay doing this? I’d suppose remakes happen because someone believes they can do better than the original. So Michael, you’re better than Alfred Hitchcock? Really? (Now imagine Amy and Seth doing their “Really?” bit from SNL’s Weekend Update.)

I have no interest in this one, but in case you do it’s still in pre-production with filming planned to start this year and a 2009 release. Hopefully Michael Bay won’t have screwed up Transformers too much when it gets released this summer.

IMDB’s The Birds (2009) page.