A new version of Rebecca is on its way courtesy of DreamWorks and Working Title. The Gothic novel by Daphne Du Maurier was famously adapted into a Best Picture winner by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, and now Showblitz reports that Eastern Promises scribe Steven Knight has been tapped to pen a new adaptation. Knight will return to Du Maurier’s novel for the update, which centers on a young woman who marries a rich widower, only to find that her husband’s late wife still haunts their mansion estate. I’m not the biggest fan of Du Maurier’s novel, but there’s something encouraging about the fact that DreamWorks and Working Title are bent on making a Gothic drama. Though in lesser hands Rebecca could easily turn into a cheap spook-fest, Knight is a promising addition. In a film landscape filled with sequels and explosions, I’m pulling for something different with Rebecca.Obviously it’s early in the game, so no director is attached at the moment. Knight has written a few high profile scripts as of late, including the Dan Brown adaptation The Lost Symbol and an untitled thriller starring Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall. He’s set to make his directorial debut on the thriller Hummingbird with Jason Statham in the lead. Hit the jump to read a synopsis for Du Maurier’s Rebecca.Here’s the synopsis for Rebecca:

With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten—a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife—the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca. [Amazon]