Gal Gadot is stepping into the high heels of one of the greatest Hollywood legends of all time — Grace Kelly — now that she has been tapped to star in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 classic, To Catch a Thief, according to a report in Deadline.
The original film, in which Kelly starred opposite Cary Grant, who played a cat burglar famed for stealing jewels, is considered one of the greatest romantic capers of all time and won an Oscar for its stunning cinematography. Set in Monaco, a country Kelly moved to a year later after she married Prince Albert of Monaco, it featured especially sexy scenes for that era, filled with doubles entendres and a very suggestive fireworks show.
Playing an icy temptress likely will not be a challenge for Wonder Woman star Gadot, who took on a similar role in the Kenneth Branagh adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. The release of that film has been delayed due to the pandemic and particularly lurid sexual abuse allegations against one of Gadot’s co-stars, Armie Hammer.
Details about the To Catch a Thief remake — such as whether it will be a period piece and if Gadot’s role will be altered so she can display her martial-arts skills, as she has in many other roles — are not known yet, but screenwriter Eileen Jones, who worked on Prodigal Son, a Fox series, has been hired to write it. Gadot and her husband, Jaron Varsano, are producing with their company, Pilot Wave. Among the other producers will be Neal Moritz, of the Fast and Furious franchise.
Gadot recently had a career high point with her role in the hit Netflix crime caper, Red Notice and she will play the Evil Queen in Disney’s upcoming Snow White, a live-action remake of the cartoon, with Rachel Zegler of West Side Story playing the title role. It has also been announced that she will be playing Cleopatra in another remake, a part previously played by Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor. Gadot graces the cover of In Style magazine this month and admitted in an interview in it that the “Imagine” video she made at the beginning of the pandemic, for which she was pilloried in the press, was ill-timed and in “poor taste.”
Remakes of Hitchcock movies are tricky, because he was such a masterful and groundbreaking filmmaker and none so far have been successful. The 2020 remake of Hitchcock’s 1940 Rebecca, which starred Hammer and Lily James in roles played by Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in the original, flopped both with critics and audiences.