Charlize Theron In Talks For Alfred Hitchcock Rope Remake

Without any other casting information available and considering the plot of the original film, Charlize Theron’s interest in the remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope brings up some intriguing questions.

Based on the 1929 stage play of the same name, Rope opens with two men— Brandon and Phillip—strangling a former classmate to death as a kind of grisly intellectual experiment. They stuff the body in an antique chest, host a dinner party with guests including the victim’s fiancee, and use the chest as the table for the meal.

If we assume the original cast of characters remains more or less intact, there aren’t a lot of places for Charlize Theron in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. There are only a few female parts, the most prominent being that of Janet Walker—who Joan Chandler played in the original—the fiancee of the victim.

Considering the kinds of powerful women Charlize Theron usually chooses to play, it seems likely either one of the female characters’ parts has been boosted in prominence or—perhaps more likely—the folks remaking Rope are planning a gender swap.

We could easily see Theron either as one of the two killers or as Rupert (originally played by James Stewart), the killers’ old prep school housemaster who exposes their crimes.

Really, the only way Charlize Theron makes sense in the remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope is either as one of the killers or as the person who figures it all out. This is the woman who out-Mad-Maxed Mad Max, who brought Aeon Flux to life, and who won her Oscar playing a real-life woman serial killer. She’s not going to play a woman who eats dinner a few feet above her fiancee’s corpse and leaves none the wiser.

Unfortunately, while we know Charlize Theron is in talks to star in the remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, we don’t have a lot of other solid info on the rest cast or which creatives, if any, have been contacted about writing or directing the feature.

Though there are a couple of educated guesses we can make. Universal acquired the rights to Rope in the 1980s from Alfred Hitchcock’s estate, so that will probably be the studio handling the film.

There’s also a very good chance that if Charlize Theron signs on to the remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, she will be doing double-duty as producer. Theron has been stepping up her game behind the camera in recent years, including on her own acting projects (Bombshell, The Old Guard), and those in which she didn’t appear at all (Murder Mystery 2, Mindhunter, Hyperdrive).

Before any of us can see Charlize Theron in the remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, we’ll hopefully get to see her reprise her role as the immortal warrior Andy in The Old Guard 2. The action-adventure sequel was delayed by a number of issues, but production has reportedly resumed.

Charlize Theron was also cast in the survival thriller Apex—a Netflix original like The Old Guard and its upcoming sequel—and the Apple Original Films heist movie Two for the Money. Theron will co-star in the latter film with Daniel Craig, and the flick will be helmed by Justin Lin of Fast & Furious fame.