Deadline is reporting that Slingshot Productions and BBC Films are working on a teen thriller based on Strangers on a Train. The working title? Teens on a Train.
That sound you just heard was Alfred Hitchcock spinning madly in his grave like an out-of-control carousel. Do you see what you’ve done, Disturbia? DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE?
Of course, like every remake nowadays, the film will be “going back to the source material”, looking at Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name and then taking huge liberties with it. In the Slingshot Productions version it’s a crazy teenage boy and a teenage girl who meet up on the train and hatch what the girl thinks is a joking plan to kill a person that’s been ruining the other person’s life. Joshua St Johnston of the BBC series Material Girl is writing the script.
For you people who’ve never seen the original (and I use the term “people” loosely), it is one of Hitchcock’s finest films, with an utterly terrifying and exciting ending that stands up to anything in the 60 years since its release. The story of two strangers jokingly deciding to “take care” of a person that’s bothering the other, before one of the individuals finds out that the other wasn’t joking at all, is a scary, timeless concept that has certainly influenced films already- Throw Mama From The Train being just one example of a film that lifts whole parts from it.
So what’s next, people? Teen Psycho? The Teen Who Knew Too Much? To Catch a Teen? Saboteen?
Watch this and cleanse your mind.