Rebecca is one of those classic memorable films in Hollywood.

To movie enthusiasts, the 1940 version of Rebecca directed by Alfred Hitchcock was very memorable to audiences, in particular for Hitchcock fans. So when Netflix decided to remake Rebecca for modern-day audiences, some people had their skepticisms.

In Netflix’s version of Rebecca, many of the elements and time periods kept the same feeling. In fact, this version of Rebecca may be closer to the novelization by Daphne Du Maurier than the Hitchcock version.

During a roundtable interview last week, director Ben Wheatley addressed the differences between this version of Rebecca and the book. His indication that there are very few differences—if at all.

“No, we got most of it in. We changed from the book was that ending,” addressed Wheatley when LRM Online’s Gig Patta asked about the differences. “The ending of the book is, which is great in the book, but not very cinematic. Everyone troops out to see the doctor and he just goes, ‘Oh, yeah. She died of cancer.’ They stand around and then they go home. On that side of it, they needed to be for a cinema rendition of it. There needed to be more attention there.”

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Of course, there were some liberties taken to make the book version to be more cinematic.

He explained, “It’s one of the great things that Jane Goldman did with the script. She invented that flight to London and the confrontation with the doctor with the evidence. Generally, the hardest thing about a book–it’s the general problem between cinema and literature. You’ve got a first-person narrative like this, unless your film is all voiceover, it’s difficult to get the exact same feeling that the book has. In the book, you have the point of view of Mrs. de Winter, which she’s speaking all the time. But, then her actions are different from what she’s saying.

“You’ll feel that there’s another trip being played here. She’s not that reliable in herself. If you exactly copy the book and put it onto the screen–you’ve kind of missed the point of the book as well. It’s a tricky, tricky thing. It’s a bit like diffusing a bomb when you’re dealing with her. She’s always going to be the smartest person in the room. You just have to trust that you keep as close to the book, and then she’ll protect you basically.”

Here’s the official synopsis:

After a whirlwind romance in Monte Carlo with handsome widower Maxim de Winter, a newly married young woman arrives at Manderley, her new husband’s imposing family estate on a windswept English coast. Naïve and inexperienced, she begins to set into the trappings of her new life but finds herself battling the shadow of Maxim’s first wife, the elegant and urbane Rebecca, whose haunting legacy is kept alive by Manderley’s sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers.

The film stars Armie Hammer, Lily James, and Kristin Scott Thomas. Ben Wheatley directed the film from the script written by Jane Goldman.

Fans of Daphne Du Maurier should check out the Netflix version of Rebecca at let us know how close it was with the adaptation with the book.

Rebecca is now streaming on Netflix today.

Source: LRM Online, Netflix