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You Can't Stop the RepeatWhat's with all the Hollywood remakes?

By Gabriel SnyderPosted Friday, July 20, 2007, at 7:26 AM ET

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The success of the Broadway show and the 2003 Chicago Oscar sweep inspired interest in an updated film version of The Producers. Several producers had owned the remake rights for the original film through the years, but they eventually landed at Universal. Wanting to get into the musical game, the studio lined up Brooks, his co-writer Thomas Meehan, and director Susan Stroman in the summer of 2003 to helm a film based on the Broadway show. Of course, critics have questioned whether the onstage magic translates onscreen, but if you need to get a movie made, finding a story that audiences have connected with in another medium isn't the worst idea.

Fun With Dick and Jane is in many ways the most common kind of remake: remade simply because it's there. Freshening up an old movie is, well, easier and faster than coming up with an original idea. If all a studio executive needs to fill out next year's slate is a family comedy or a horror film, the quickest way to get one is to recycle content from the studio's own film library. Much of the heavy lifting to shape a three-act story has already been done.

For instance, in the fall of 2003, just after a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre demonstrated the box office clout of horror pics, MGM was eager to catch the wave and called in Michael Bay to produce a remake of The Amityville Horror, which it had first made in 1979. Able to shave years off the typical original screenplay development process, the picture was in theaters less than 18 months later.

But production of Fun With Dick and Jane, which started out as a quickie remake of the 1977 heist comedy starring George Segal and Jane Fonda, ended up a more difficult endeavor than expected. (Disclosure: My boss, Variety editor in chief Peter Bart, was a producer on the original and is an executive producer on the update.) Everything was in place to begin shooting in September 2003. Barry Sonnenfeld was attached to direct; Cameron Diaz and Jim Carrey were starring. But Sonnenfeld abruptly left the production, and there was no time to find a replacement before Carrey would be tied up filming Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Once Dick and Jane missed Carrey's window, production was aimed for the following fall. Dean Parisot was hired as a replacement for Sonnenfeld, but then Diaz dropped out a couple months before shooting. Téa Leoni joined the cast, and cameras were rolling by September. Production on the movie ran over schedule; it finally wrapped in March of this year. The "quickie" movie intended for release in the summer of 2004 didn't reach theaters until Dec. 21, 2005.

Retreading movies may not always go as studios hope, but don't expect the flood of remakes to subside. Next year you'll see updates of The Pink Panther, The Shaggy Dog, Flicka, The Poseidon Adventure, Charlotte's Web, Last Holiday, When a Stranger Calls, and Miami Vice. 2006 will feel like déjà vu all over again.

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Gabriel Snyder covers the film industry for Variety in Los Angeles.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

You didn't discuss remakes of classic novels, and some of them deserve a new movie interpretation. Some have been done on film numerous times, i.e. (Tale of Two Cities, Christmas Carol, Les Miserables) and it is a pleasure oftentimes to view the various interpretations.

One important work has been neglected for reasons I do not understand---Graham Greene's "Power and the Glory" which showed up in such a watered down form in the 1940s due to heavy censorship that the heart of the story was not recognizable. At least one version has been done for TV but I have not seen it and reviews of it are not very good anyway. For a long time I have "known" that Robin Williams should portray the whiskey priest in a movie version. One can almost "see" Williams's face when reading the story of the tormented priest.

Why doesn't someone turn this masterpiece into a filmed masterpiece. It is long overdue.

--oxmont

(To reply, click here.)

Any book on Hollywood history could have a tagline that goes something like "how to make money doing the same thing over and over." Hollywood remakes have been happening since the beginning of "talkies," when studios decided to remake some favorite silent flicks with the new technology of sound. Ever since, there seems to be a cycle that Hollywood is constantly in the process of remaking something, usually a film that is roughly 20-30 years old.

So, while it seems that remakes are up, and you can use numbers to prove it, what's really happening is a shift to another decade of remakes. We've done our Seventies remakes, and it seems like the shift to the Eighties is happening. But, the question isn't so much "How much is Hollywood remaking these days" as it should be "How much original content is coming from Hollywood."

Now that would be news, and should be. Why keep making it news that Hollywood is doing what it always does? [That's] like making a story that some computer company is still making computers, when the true story lies in when that computer company starts making anything other than computers.

--alisondunn

(To reply, click here.)

(7/26)

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