See Scarlett Johannson, Jessica Biel And More In First Images From Hitchcock

For some reason Alfred Hitchcock is really trendy this season, with no less than two films coming out about the iconic horror director, each of them featuring the kind of lead performance that seems destined to win awards. Luckily Anthony Hopkins and Toby Jones won't have to go head-to-head to be rewarded for their Hitch performances, since Hopkins is starring in Hitchcock in theaters, while Jones's The Girl is airing on HBO later this month.

I caught The Girl over the weekend at the Hamptons International Film Festival and wrote about it here, but now it's time to talk about Hitchcock, which Fox Searchlight recently set for a November 23 release date. There's no trailer for the film yet, so our first in-depth look at the film is coming via the very weird format of a People magazine page, featuring five images from the film. Check out Jessica Biel, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, James D'arcy and Hopkins in their period best in the image below (click for a larger size).



If you're not familiar with the Psycho story-- and if not, please see that movie before this one comes out!-- Janet Leigh (Johansson) plays the ostensible heroine, who skips down with some stolen cash and decides to hang out in the Bates Motel. But thanks to supremely creepy hotel owner Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins, played by James D'arcy) and a shower gone unforgettably wrong, Leigh's character is out of the picture, leaving her sister (Vera Miles, played by Jessica Biel) to investigate her disappearance. Hitchcock, as you can guess, takes place on the set of Psycho, and is described as a love story between Hitchcock and his wife Alma (Mirren). As it turns out, The Girl depict Hitchcock's relationship with his wife quite differently, since it focuses on the affair he pursued with Tippi Hedren on the set of The Birds, barely a decade after Psycho.

Obviously we've got two very different takes on Hitchcock coming our way, and it's exciting to look at these photos and think that both of them could be pretty good. Scarlett Johansson's eyebrows alone makes me think we're in for some real dedication to the period setting-- and maybe some valuable insight into one of the most famous horror films of all time.