Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg is finally returning to the story he gave up to direct his most iconic film.
On Tuesday, Apple TV released a teaser trailer for Cape Fear, a limited series inspired by the 1991 thriller of the same name that Spielberg, 79, traded to Martin Scorsese, 83, for Schindler’s List.
The new 10-episode series will star Javier Bardem in Robert De Niro’s leading role as Max Cady, a newly released convicted killer who seeks revenge on his public defenders, whom he blames for his 14-year prison sentence.
In the late 1980s, Spielberg and Scorsese swapped scripts for Cape Fear and Schindler’s List after each decided that they could not continue the project they were working on at Universal Pictures.
Scorsese needed a box-office hit after directing the controversial The Last Temptation of Christ, and Spielberg wanted to finally win his first directing Oscar after finishing a run of commercial successes with Indiana Jones and The Goonies.
Spielberg won seven Oscars for his historical Holocaust drama, including his first for Best Director, and Scorsese made more than six times his film’s budget at the box office.
Spielberg and Scorsese are both executive producers of the new limited series, which is helmed by Hannibal and Chucky producer Nick Antosca.
In the new series, Bardem, 57, returns to the psychopathic character acting that won him his Oscar for No Country for Old Men. The trailer shows him laughing maniacally, tracking the Bowden family like prey, and putting his public defenders on a trial of his own design.
“What is your worst fear?” Cady asks in the trailer, echoing his iconic line as Anton Chigurh, “What’s the most you’ve ever lost on a coin toss?”
Whereas in the film Cady hunts down one lawyer, the new series pits the psychopathic predator against a lawyer couple Anna and Tom Bowden, played by Oscar nominee Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson.
Despite representing Cady, the Bowdens hid evidence that may have absolved the convict because they were so appalled by his crimes.
“Is there any way Max could know what we did?” a panicked Anna asks her husband.
Newly released from prison, Cady works within the law to hunt and psychologically torture the lawyers who put him behind bars. The killer forces the Bowdens to consider the lengths—legal and otherwise—that they will go to protect their family.
The new thriller series will stream on Apple TV beginning on June 5, and subsequent episodes will release every Friday.
