"/webmaster.waroftheworlds.com/click.html?c=ETFYGW"">/dreamworksfansite.com/ad/wotw_160_160.gif"" border=""1"" target=""_blank"" align=""left"">Michael Bay is giving serious thought to remaking Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 classic The Birds.

Bay's remake-happy Platinum Dunes shingle is looking to update Daphne du Maurier's original short story with Peter Guber's Mandalay Pictures through Universal Pictures. Universal produced the Hitchcock film, which earned an Oscar nomination for Ub Iwerks' special effects, and still owns the rights to du Maurier's story, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The familiar tale focuses on a small coastal town -- Bodega Bay in Hitchcock's original -- under siege by a swarm of violent birds. Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren and Jessica Tandy starred in the 1963 version.

If Bay's dream of remaking The Birds comes through, it might join the pantheon of Hitchcock remakes including the 1998 double-bill of Gus Van Sant's Psycho and Andrew Davis' A Perfect Murder (based on the same source material as ""Dial 'M' for Murder""). Even Hitchcock had difficulties remaking Hitchcock -- note the diminishing returns between his 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much and its 1956 update.

A new version of Strangers on a Train is currently being mounted at Warner Bros.

Platinum appears to have little use for original ideas, and who can blame the company? The remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a large hit and the low budget update on The Amityville Horror has already taken in more than $43 million in its first two weeks in release. Platinum is also developing a remake of The Hitcher.

Source: Zap2It"