To Catch A Thief Remake Will Star Gal Gadot
Your gal pal Gal (sorry) Gadot isn't letting her already busy schedule stop her from lining up even more projects. Fresh off of Netflix's "Red Notice" and "Death On the Nile" (which will maybe come out someday), Gadot is diving headfirst into her next project, which has a classic film twist. According to Deadline, she's set to start in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 romance-thriller "To Catch a Thief." This is a remake that's been shuffling around Hollywood for a little bit, but with Gadot's name (and her production company) attached, it might just happen.
Besides producers Jaron Varsano and Neal Moritz, the rest of Gadot's "To Catch a Thief" cast and crew haven't been announced, save for Eileen Jones, who will be writing the remake. Jones most recently wrote on Fox's dark police procedural "Prodigal Son," but she's also working on the action-packed Western "Highwayman" with Margot Robbie and Christina Hodson for New Line. We don't know what Jones and Gadot's "To Catch a Thief" will look like yet, but it would be fun to see a version of the film that went a little darker or even opted for a high voltage thriller vibe. If you're going to remake a classic, you might as well do something different.
To Catch a Remake
If you're not as familiar with Hitchcock's work, the original film starred a few of his favorite actors, Carey Grant and Grace Kelly, traipsing around the French Riviera and falling into the kind of frenzied, stress-driven love that Hitchcock did best. Between the old-timey kissing and beautiful vistas, "To Catch a Thief" served up a game of cat and mouse between two jewel thieves. While we can assume that Gadot will be stepping into Kelly's role as the heiress Frances, there's no word on who will play opposite of her in Grant's role. Hitchcock's version fully leans into the chemistry between Grant and Kelly, so if this adaptation is faithful, that casting means quite a bit. If Jones wants to mix it up, all bets are off.
This remake (or a long-gone version of it) started generating buzz in 2011 when screenwriter Josh Stolberg ("Jigsaw," "Piranha 3D") was set write and Neal Moritz was down to produce. That obviously didn't end up happening, and maybe it's for the best. At one point, Stolberg described his version of "To Catch a Thief" as "gadgety," which feels all sorts of wrong.
Remakes are hard; you want them to be different, but you don't want them to feel like a cheap echo of the original story. Hopefully, Gadot and Jones are able to strike a balance between to two, but between you and me, Hollywood would be a more interesting place if there was a moratorium on remakes, if only for a few years. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in and nobody listens to me.