MGM/UA Television is in the process of developing a limited series based on Dial M For Murder. Alicia Vikander is on board as a producer and will possibly star in the project that is based on the 1952 play of the same name by Frederick Knott, which was adapted into the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Vikander is spearheading the project through her Vikarious Film banner and the limited series will reimagine the classic suspense thriller story from the female perspective. In Hitchcock’s film, the role was played by Grace Kelly. Michael Mitnick is creating and writing the series with Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter overseeing. Mitnick is a playwright/screenwriter whose sole previous TV series writing credit was on HBO’s Vinyl, co-created and executive produced by Winter.
The original Dial M For Murder centers on a retired tennis champion (played in the movie by Ray Milland) who discovers that his wife (Kelly) has had an affair and hires an acquaintance to murder her. When the plan backfires and the wife kills her assassin, her husband frames her for the man’s murder, with his elaborate plot only uncovered with the help of his wife’s lover hours before she was to be executed after being sentenced to death. The limited series, if successful, would have potential follow-up installments in the suspense thriller genre from a similarly female point of view.
