The long gestating adaptation of Stephen Rebello’s book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho looks like it’s finally coming to fruition. Not only has Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs) signed on to play the famous director, but Helen Mirren (The Queen) has joined the cast as Alma Reville, Hitchcock’s wife. With the behind-the-camera casting set, it’s now being reported that Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation) will step into the shoes of Psycho star, Janet Leigh. James D’Arcy (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World) will co-star beside Johansson as Anthony Perkins/Norman Bates. Hit the jump for more.

When the Lumiere brothers made “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” in 1896, audiences famously left the theater, afraid that a silent train might kill them. At least, that’s what the history books tell us. For modern audiences, a shot of a silent train in black and white would have no such weight. Such is partially the dilemma of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. On one hand it was the master at his subversive and transgressive best, on the other hand so much has changed in fifty years of cinema that it’s virtually impossible for an audience to find the film without knowing the big reveal or having a familiarity with its set pieces – if only from the pop culture unconsciousness. The shower scene from Psycho is so well known that it’s possible some people know it only from the parodies (done by The Simpsons, Jackass, etc.). In Psycho, Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, a woman who steals money from work and spends a night at the Bates Motel as run by the troubled mother’s boy Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Regardless of whether you know what’s waiting for you in the fruit cellar, Psycho is still a great film – at least it is once it’s removed from the amber it’s been encased in. My review of Psycho on Blu-ray after the jump.