Lily James and Armie Hammer star in first trailer for 'Rebecca'

Netflix has launched the first trailer for Ben Wheatley’s new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, starring Lily James, Armie Hammer and Kristin Scott Thomas.

At turns steamy, at others sinister, the handsome period thriller looks a world apart from Wheatley’s previous films such as Kill List, Free Fire and High Rise. It tells the story of a young woman (James) whose life takes a strange turn when she marries an aristocratic widower (Hammer) after a whirlwind romance.

Watch the first trailer below.

The acclaimed 1938 book was first adapted just two years after its release by Alfred Hitchcock, with Laurence Olivier and Jean Fontaine in the leads.

British filmmaker Wheatley says he’s gone back to the source material for his new adaptation, which is not a simple remake of the Hitchcock classic.

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“It’s not, in any sense, a remake of the Hitchcock film,” the director tells Empire, “firmly not.

“Remaking a film is not that interesting to me, but the original source material is. I watched all the adaptations. It’s important to see what’s gone before, but that’s certainly not the focus.”

Here’s the synopsis: After a whirlwind romance in Monte Carlo with handsome widower Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer), a newly married young woman (Lily James) arrives at Manderley, her new husband’s imposing family estate on a windswept English coast.

Naive and inexperienced, she begins to settle 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 (Kristin Scott Thomas).

Directed by Ben Wheatley (High Rise, Free Fire) and produced by Working Title Films (Emma, Darkest Hour), REBECCA is a mesmerising and gorgeously rendered psychological thriller based on Daphne du Maurier’s beloved 1938 gothic novel.

Rebecca will launch globally on Netflix on 21 October.