Hitchcock Returns to the Big Screen

Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock is to be brought back to life in a movie about his early years.

Kung-Fu Panda and Good Luck Chuck star Dan Fogler has signed on to playthe heavyweight auteur in Number 13 - alongside British stars Ewan McGregor and Emily Mortimer.

The film is based on the set of Hitchcock's lost and unfinished 1922 movie of the same name, and centres on the death of a lead actor and a lovetriangle featuring the director and two crew members.

In an interview with Starpulse, Fogler reveals he has been immersing himself in Hitchcock's work, so he can become the famous director onscreen.

He says, "I knew the movies that everyone knows, Psycho and The Birds, but I had to do a lot of research with the books. "I really focused on his early stuff because that's what it's about.

It's like Hitchcock in Love, it's about him in his early 20s just finding himself as an artist, as a director.

"It gives you more freedom because people aren't as familiar with youngHitchcock as they are with older Hitchcock. But it's a lot harder in a lot of ways because you have to play his origins. You have to play the seeds of that character everyone knows. It's a fine line".

Shooting will begin later in 2009 and the movie is slated for release in 2011.