The Bramble Bush (1951-1953)
The Bramble Bush would have been an adaptation of a 1948 novel by David Duncan about a disaffected Communist agitator, who on the run from the police, is forced to adopt the identity of a murder suspect. The story would be adapted to take place in Mexico and San Francisco.
The project, originally to come after I Confess (1953) as a Transatlantic Pictures production to be released by Warner Brothers, had a high budget which made it a difficult project. Hitchcock did not feel that any of the scripts lifted the movie beyond an ordinary chase story, and Warner Brothers allowed him to kill the project and move on to Dial M for Murder (1954).
The theme of the hero assuming a dangerous new identity would become the kernel of the script for North by Northwest (1959). Michelangelo Antonioni's film The Passenger (1975) tells a similar story, but is not based on Duncan's book. The 1960 film The Bramble Bush, starring Richard Burton and Barbara Rush, and released by Warner Brothers, was based on a Charles Mergendahl novel, and had no relation to Duncan's book.
Read more about this topic: List Of Unproduced Hitchcock Projects