Anthony Hopkins is in talks to play Alfred Hitchcock in a big screen account of the making of Psycho, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The project, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, is based on the 1998 non-fiction book of the same name by Stephen Rebello. British film-maker Sacha Gervasi, who directed the acclaimed documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil, is tipped to direct. Gervasi was previously best known as a screenwriter, having penned the script for Steven Spielberg's 2004 film The Terminal.

Rebello's book concerns the decision by Hitchcock to embark on a horror project at the height of his powers in 1960, at a time when the genre was still sneered upon by Hollywood execs. Unable to secure financing from the studios, the film-maker used his own money on the project, which became one of his most critically and commercially successful, as well as enduring, films. At the heart of the screenplay by Black Swan writer John McLaughlin is the relationship between Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville.

The project has been gestating for some time, and Hopkins was previously attached to a version that would have seen him star opposite Helen Mirren for director Ryan Murphy (Glee).