HBO is developing a limited television adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s novella The Birds, with Sarah Snook set to star, Deadline reported. The project reimagines the material behind Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film and expands it into a multi-episode story that adds new characters and a crime element to the classic bird-attack premise.
Creative team and premise
The pilot episode is written by Tom Spezialy, whose credits include executive producing The Leftovers, and the series is produced by David Heyman, an executive producer on the recent Harry Potter television project. Deadline said Spezialy’s script introduces a new protagonist, Myra Massey, to be played by Snook.
According to Deadline, the pilot follows Myra after a bitter custody battle. She returns home with her daughter and secretly begins investigating the disappearance of a childhood friend. The series will interweave that mystery with the hallmark mysterious bird attacks, and those attacks are said to be “linked to the crime,” introducing a murder‑mystery throughline that will extend across multiple episodes.
How this adaptation differs
- The project updates Daphne du Maurier’s novella rather than directly remaking Hitchcock’s film, adding new characters and a prolonged narrative arc.
- The creative team is emphasizing a contemporary mystery — a custody battle and a friend’s disappearance — as the story engine for the limited series.
- HBO is positioning the material as a serialized thriller that preserves the bird-attack element while broadening the scope beyond the two-hour structure of the 1963 movie.
The Birds has been the subject of several attempted remakes and reboots over the years. Industry efforts previously included a planned feature with director Martin Campbell and Naomi Watts that did not materialize and a BBC series effort in 2017 that also failed to advance. The original Hitchcock film remains the most familiar screen version; the new HBO project appears intended to expand the story’s emotional and procedural territory for television.
No production schedule, episode count, or release date has been announced.
