Plans going ahead for a Limited Series of The Birds to be made in the US
Sarah Snook
In 1952, Daphne du Maurier's novella The Birds was published, along with five other short stories, in the collection The Apple Tree: A Short Novel and Several Long Stories. She had been inspired to write The Birds when she saw the farmer, Tommy Dunn, at Menabilly Barton Farm, near her home at Menabilly, ploughing his field with masses of seagulls circling him. The gulls were wheeling as if they were going to attack the farmer, and this led to Daphne's story of the birds' violent, repeated attacks on a small Cornish community. Daphne's story provided no explanation for the plague of birds and the apocalyptic violence it described. Yet, it seems to anticipate imminent large-scale environmental catastrophe.
In 1963, film director Alfred Hitchcock directed The Birds, taking the idea from Daphne's novella but turning it into a vastly different, much bigger story, set in the US at Bodega Bay, California. His main character, not in Daphne's story at all, was Melanie Daniels, played by Tippi Hedren. Other stars in the film included Rod Taylor as Mitch Brenner and Jessica Tandy as Lynda Brenner. The Birds was a hugely successful film, and has always been spoken of as 'Hitchcock's The Birds', despite it being taken from Daphne du Maurier's story.
At about the same time as the film's release, Penguin began publishing paperback editions of Daphne's books. Penguin had published its first ten paperback books in 1935, so paperbacks being produced on a massive scale was a fairly new intervention in the world of publishing, and Daphne's publisher, Victor Gollancz, was initially very concerned about Daphne's planned involvement with Penguin. Because The Birds had been the most successful story in the collection, when Penguin published The Apple Tree, it was retitled The Birds and Other Stories and has maintained that title ever since.
Over the last twenty years or so, there have been several attempts to remake The Birds, but until now, nothing has succeeded. However, there are now plans to produce a limited series of The Birds in the US.
Taking the lead in this project are Universal International Studios and Heyday Television. The script has been written by Tom Spezialy, the American television producer, screenwriter and director, who is probably best known for Desperate Housewives, The Leftovers and The Watchmen. There are plans for Australian actress, Sarah Snook, to take the lead role. She is probably best known for her roles in the film Succession and the TV series Run Rabbit Run, among many others in her prolific career. In this adaptation of The Birds, Sarah will play the lead character. Myra Massey, a travelling magistrate who returns to her isolated home town in Alaska, where she discovers that her childhood friend has been murdered. So, another very different plot from both Daphne's novella, with its quiet characters of Nat Hocken and his wife and family, and indeed Melanie Daniels, from the Hitchcock film. However, the word on this series is that the writer has gone back to Daphne's original story, rather than the film.
In the new series, while Myra investigates the murder, a plot line which is not part of either Daphne's original story or the Hitchcock film, coordinated bird attacks begin. In this adaptation, the bird attacks are driven by ecological collapse and climate change, making it highly relevant to the present.
Interestingly, there is documented scientific evidence for ecological events in Alaska that fit this storyline. Between 2014 and 2016, a marine heatwave wiped out approximately 4 million common murres. This event has been described as the largest single-species wildlife die-off in history. One of the year-round locations where you will find common murres is the Alaskan coast, and it is believed that climate change and warming ocean temperatures may also affect the availability of their food. Research published this year shows that elevated corticosterone, the primary avian stress hormone, drives measurably increased aggression in food-stressed birds. The new series stretches this data to a hypothetical lethal extreme.
Both Daphne's short story and Hitchcock's film were extremely frightening, with a complete absence of certainty about what was happening or why the birds were attacking, but this series looks set to take fear to a whole new level as the birds take control.
It is too soon to speculate on a release date for this series, but we will keep you informed as more information comes through.
Ann Willmore, June 2026.