The main reason to remake a movie is the main reason to make a sequel, a reboot, or anything else tied to existing intellectual property: Brand value.
Everyone in Hollywood wants a hit, and, at least according to conventional wisdom, the quickest and easiest way to produce one is to make something with a built-in audience. And of course, there are plenty of remakes that have banked on viewers’ familiarity with the original film as a means of generating big box office grosses, such as King Kong, Dawn of the Dead, Alice in WonderlandIt is The Lion King to name just a few.
All of these films share the title of the previous film that inspired them. Occasionally, however, a remake takes a different path and tries to create its own identity with a different name than its predecessor. On the surface, this seems to contradict the entire point of making a remake. Why try to hide the fact that you are remaking something that was once very successful?
The answer should be obvious: sometimes you no I want the audience to know that your film is a remake. If other remakes suddenly start failing at the box office, or if polls suggest that audiences are tired of remakes/sequels/reboots, you may want to mask your film’s origins. In other cases, the connections between films may have been obvious when the remake was made, but as the years and decades pass, the remake becomes so iconic that it replaces the original in the minds of many film lovers.
No matter the reason, there are some famous remakes and others that go unnoticed. The 15 films below fall into the latter category.
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Gallery credit: Emma Stefansky
