The Lodger gets roommates
Simon Baker, Shane West, Phillip Baker Hall, Rebecca Pidgeon, Rachel Leight Cook, and Mell Harris have joined Edward Molina and Hope Davis in the cast of THE LODGER, a thriller written and directed by David Ondaatje for Stage 6 Films, a new Sony subsidiary set up to create low-budget features with an eye toward the video market (although theatrical release is a possibility, depending on Sony’s reaction to the finished film).
According to Variety:
Film is a reimagining of the Marie Belloc Lowndes novel that served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s debut pic, 1927’s “The Lodger.”
Ondaatje-penned script, set in present-day Los Angeles, has two converging plotlines: The first involves a cat-and-mouse game between a troubled detective (Molina) and an unknown killer; the second explores the relationship between an emotionally disturbed landlady (Davis) and her enigmatic “lodger.”
The tale of the Lodger is a bit of a footnote in the history of the Jack the Ripper case - an unidentified tenant who was mysteriously absent whenever the Ripper struck. Scholars hardly consider the mystery man as a serious suspect; his absences were probably coincidental, and no one knows who the Lodger was, so even if he was the Ripper, it brings us no closer to a solution.
Nevertheless, the idea is a great premise for a thriller. Besides the Hitchcock film, there was a sound remake in 1944, directed by John Brahm and starring Laird Cregar in the title role. It stands as one of the best mystery-horror-thrillers ever produced, and one can only hope that Ondaatje’s modernized version will be a worthwhile successor.
