Somewhere, Alfred Hitchcock is slowly rotating in his grave.
Plans are afoot to bring the Psycho films to television in a predictable manner. Inspired perhaps by the recent wave of successful cable horror shows like True Blood and American Horror Story, A&E is developing an original series based on the 1960 suspense classic and grandfather of the slasher movie.
Bates Motel takes place during the early years of future matricidal maniac Norman Bates (played in the films by the late Anthony Perkins) and follow his tense and psychologically damaging upbringing at the hands of his fanatical mother Norma. The pilot is being scripted by Anthony Cipriano (Twelve and Holding). Bates Motel was also the title of a 1987 NBC TV-movie that was originally intended as the pilot for a weekly series that went unsold.
In 1990 Showtime aired Psycho IV: The Beginning, a made-for-cable film that starred Perkins and explored Norman’s younger years as he developed into the wig-wearing killer who would have that fateful meeting with Janet Leigh on a rainy night.
Being the network that brought the world Hoarders, A&E is the perfect place for a series about Norman Bates; no matter what cheesy, dusty trinkets, stacks of yellowed newspapers, and Ziploc bags full of goldfish your senile aunt Patricia may keep in her mildew-encrusted attic, it will never beat a guy who keeps the decayed corpse of his mother in his cellar.
[Source: Hollywood Reporter]
