Ben Affleck and director David Fincher are planning to reunite with Gone Girl screenwriter Gillian Flynn to remake Alfred Hitchcok's 1951 thriller Strangers on a Train for Warner Bros.
Affleck will play a modern version Farley Granger's role, the tennis pro grappling with the dawn of midlife malaise who's chance encounter with a murderous schemer lands him in the center of a deadly manipulation. Currently titled simply Strangers, the film updates Hitchcock's original story by making the protagonist a movie star whose flight to Los Angeles breaks down while he's attempting to make the awards-season promotional rounds, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Affleck's character gets picked up by a wealthy stranger with a private jet who flies the star to his destination, presumably bargaining for the infamous murder swap on the way.
"I think we both enjoy pushing the envelope a little bit," screenwriter Flynn recently said of her creative relationship with Fincher.
"We like to tiptoe up to the line of acceptability and then maybe drift over it a little bit."
A production date has not yet been announced for Strangers, but Deadline Hollywood reports Affleck plans to shoot his portions of the film in 2016 after completing Dennis Lehane's Live by Night, on which Affleck is starring and directing. Strangers will be the second leg of a busy stretch for Affleck, who is tentatively scheduled to go right from filming the Hitchcock remake to working on the sequel to Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice.