Scott Thomas joins Netflix cast of 'Rebecca'

Actress Kristin Scott Thomas has joined Lily James and Armie Hammer in the cast of Netflix’s film of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Scott Thomas will play Mrs Danvers, the sinister housekeeper of the story.

Rebecca, first published in 1938 by Gollancz and now published by Virago, follows a newly-married young woman who, on arriving at her husband's imposing family estate on a bleak English coast, finds herself battling the shadow of his dead first wife, the mysterious Rebecca, whose legacy haunts the house. The novel has never been out of print and has sold 438,427 copies for £3.03m in the Nielsen BookScan era (since 1998).

The book was made into an Alfred Hitchcock film in 1940. The new Working Title incarnation will be directed by Ben Wheatley of “High-Rise”, and will start production this summer in the UK and France.

Another novel by Du Maurier, The Flight of the Falcon, will be adapted into a modern-day drama series, it was revealed in November, with the project under discussion at the time with two potential UK broadcasters and two Italian broadcasters.