Chances are, some of your favorite videos are actually remakes and you may not even know it. Sometimes they can be remakes of old Hollywood movies, they can be remakes of foreign films, but some of the most productive films of all time are based in one way or another on previous work. Here’s our list of 32 wonderful movies that are truly remakes.
Steve Martin’s 1991 film, Father of the Bride, is loved by millions of people who grew up with this film as one of their favorite comedies. What may surprise you is that this is a remake. The original, starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor, marked a point in Taylor’s career when she began to bet on adult roles. It’s also very good, having been nominated for several Academy Awards following its release in 1950.
Normally, one would expect a film released in the 1950s to be the one to be remade, rather than a remake, however, one of the most important films in Hollywood history, 1959’s Ben-Hur, is itself a remake. The original, a silent film released in 1925, was also a box office success, but it is almost absolutely in the shadow of the success led by Charlton Heston.
Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro are fantastic in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 Cape Fear. De Niro was cast in the role and his performance is legendary. The film itself is a remake of a 1962 film starring Gregory Peck as Nolte and Robert Mitchem as the psychopath Max Cady, played by De Niro in the remake. A curious fact is that Peck and Mitchem looked like other characters from the remake.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is one of the most quotable and enduring comedies of the ’80s. Michael Caine, Steve Martin and Glenne Headly star in the film about scheming con artists on the French Riviera. It is also a remake of a film starring David Niven, Marlon Brando and Shirley Jones called Bedtime Story, released in 1964.
1994’s True Lies featured Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron at the height of their collective power. Tom Arnold is also strangely wonderful. The original edition of the story had been released 3 years earlier, a French comedy called La Totale!It doesn’t have the massive action sequences of True Lies, but it’s fun.
Michael Mann’s 1995 film Heat is one of the most productive heist films ever made and marked the first time Robert De Niro and Al Pacino faced off in a movie (they were in The Godfather II, but not together).
If you grew up in the ’80s, there’s a good chance that the 1986 movie The Fly was one of the craziest movies you don’t forget to see. The combination of Jeff Goldblum as star and David Cronenberg as director creates a wild horror movie adventure. The images stay with you forever. Of course, the original, released in 1958, is also a vintage of the sci-fi and horror genre and is not to be missed.
The Birdcage was a huge fortune when it was released in 1991. The film directed by Robin Williams and Nathan Lane is considered a landmark film in the LQBTQ representation in cinema and a remake of a glorious French film called La Cage aux FollesArray La Cage aux Folles. It won a Golden Globe and was nominated for three Academy Awards upon its release in 1978.
The Ring, one of the scariest films of the early 21st century that benefited from an exclusive marketing crusade that inherently scared people. The horror film directed by Gore Verbinski is a fantasy remake of a 1998 Japanese film simply called Ring. Both are excellent.
Did you know that Three Men and a Baby is a remake? Like many films, it was based on an earlier French film. Trois hommes et un couffin, which translates as “Three Men and a Cradle,” dates back to 1985, two years before its American cousin. The French edition had good luck in France and was nominated for the Oscar for the most productive foreign film.
It’s rare for remakes to be better than the original, but a clear example of this is 1999’s The Thomas Crown Affair, starring Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo. That’s not to say that the original 1968 edition starring Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen is bad, because it’s also great. That’s how clever the newest edition is. Both are worth checking out if you’ve never noticed them.
Despite being one of the most productive westerns of the 21st century, 3:10 To Yuma was a box office disappointment. Both the 2007 and 1957 versions of the film were based on a short story by the wonderful Elmore Leonard.
For many, the ultimate unexpected hit on this list will be Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece, The Departed. That’s right, the Best Picture winner released in 2006 was a remake of a 2002 Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs. Obviously, the setting and characters are different, as Scorsese set his film in Boston, but the plot points, the duels between the police “rats” and the mafia, remain at the center of both stories.
This one is a little different from most of the others on this list. 1986’s Little Shop of Horrors was a film adaptation of a 1983 Broadway musical, but the musical was based on a 1960 B-movie horror film directed by Roger Corman. Frankly, all three are worth it, but the quirky 1988 edition of the musical is the best.
The original Gone In 60 Seconds, released in 1974, is a low-budget film that was necessarily the vision of the H-man. The remake, which only complements the plot with very few commonalities, is a blockbuster blockbuster. budget It is also a very fun watch. It’s filled with some of the coolest cars in Hollywood history, so if that’s your thing, you deserve to check out both.
There are few films in history as disturbing as 1987’s Fatal Attraction. Glenn Close’s performance as an abandoned lover/psychopath is remarkable and it’s a shame he didn’t win an Oscar for it. The film itself is based on a 1980 short film called Diversion. Both were written by James Dearden, who also appeared on the 2023 TV show, also called Fatal Attraction.
The Ladykillers, directed by the Coen brothers, is considered a bad movie by iconic directors. Maybe it’s because it’s a new version. Sure, they did a wonderful job with True Grit, but the original Ladykillers, released in 1955 and starring Alec Guinness, is a much more wonderful film than the Coens version, and that’s not easy to admit.
Angels in the Outfield is another film on this list that might surprise you. The family’s baseball movie released in 1994 was a good fortune and is still enjoyed today by those nostalgic for their childhood. It’s also a remake of a movie that few of those same people have seen. The original film Angels in the Outfield was released in 1951 and performed poorly at the box office, but today it looks better.
The 1941 Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart, is a stone-cold classic. Surprisingly, it’s also a remake! That’s right, one of the most productive films of all time based on a film of the same title ten years earlier. The original is largely forgotten in those days, and understandably so.
One of the most overlooked films of recent years has to be 2022’s Living, starring Bill Nighy. The film, based on a 1952 Akira Kurosawa film called Ikiru, is about what it means to be liberated through a terminal cancer diagnosis and actually begin. . . to live. It’s an ambitious move to remake a film by a master like Kurosawa, but the team behind Living knocked it out of the park.
The 2009 film directed by Tony Scott, The Taking Of Pelham 123, is the third film adaptation of a novel by Morton Freedgood. The first film, directed by Joseph Sargent and starring Walter Matthau, remains the most productive of the three, but the 2009 edition is also worth a look.
2010’s Dinner for Dummies is the most important film Steve Carrell has ever directed, but its functionality is still fantastic. This is a real positive point of the film. If you need the same story, only better, and don’t worry about French subtitles, watch the movie on which Schmucks is based, the 1998 French film The Dinner Game.
This is an exclusive case. The Man Who Knew Too Much About 1956 Alfred Hitchcock is, in fact, a remake of his own 1934 film of the same name. The ’50s version, starring James Stewart and Doris Day, has changed quite a bit from the original, but you simply have to come with it for its exclusivity.
The mythical 1983 Scarface is very different from the film on which it was founded, a 1932 film lightly animated by Al Capone. The 1980s film is about a Cuban immigrant who is forced into the Miami underground, unlike the character encouraged by Capone in Chicago’s original rise by force.
Al Pacino finally won his first Oscar for his role in Scent Of A Woman in 1992. Although it is debatable whether this is one of Pacino’s most successful roles, there is no doubt that he was going to win an Oscar at some point. The film was based on an Italian film of the same title (Profumo di donna in Italian), and this film was nominated for two Academy Awards, so it is worth watching.
Yes, there was a remake of the movie The Magnificent Seven directed by John Sturges in 2060 in 2016, but here we are talking about the original. The 1960 film is technically a remake of Kurosawa’s 1954 The Seven Samurai, which is among the Japanese director’s films. The best. Sturges’ film is also wonderful.
Victor/Victoria, starring Julie Andrews in one of her most productive roles and directed by the wonderful Blake Edwards, is a forgotten success in those days. He was nominated for seven Academy Awards in his time and delivers glorious performances. The film was a new versión. de a 1933 German film called Viktor und Viktoria.
2004’s Man on Fire is not one of Denzel Washington’s most productive films. The movie, a remake (or at least some other movie based on the same book), isn’t very smart either. The original was released in 1987 and starred Scott Glenn in the title role. It’s a wonderful story, so at some point, maybe someone will remake it and make it work.
Warren Beaty was nominated for 4 Academy Awards for 1978’s Heaven Can Wait, earning nominations for Best Picture (he produced it), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor. Unfortunately it didn’t win any, but it’s still a perfect film. It is a remake of a 1941 film called Here Comes Mr. Jordan, which was originally based on a level play.
An Unforgettable Case (1957), starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, is one of the most beloved films of its time, but it was not entirely original. It was a remake of a 1939 film called Love Affair, which itself was much less revered. Remember, the next time someone says “Hollywood has run out of original ideas,” Hollywood has been remaking videos forever.
2021’s CODA was a huge success and won Best Picture at the 2022 Academy Awards. It tells the story of a woman who is the only hearing member of a deaf family. It’s a tough film, which is reflected in the praise it has received from critics. It’s a remake of another glorious film, a Belgian film called La Famille Bélier released in 2014.
Although The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was a modest success with sometimes poor reviews, it deserves to be noticed by any cinephile. Ben Stiller gives one of the most productive performances of his illustrious career in the film, which is the second adaptation of a short story by writer James Thurber. The first dates back to 1947, with Danny Kaye in the lead role.
Hugh Scott is CinemaBlend’s distribution editor. Prior to CinemaBlend, he was editor-in-chief of Suggest. com and Gossipcop. com, covering celebrity news and debunking fake gossip. He has worked in the publishing industry for about two decades, covering pop culture (videos and television shows in particular) with a willing interest and love for Gen that she has fostered ever since. He earned a degree in political science from Boston University, but was cured of political bias almost without delay after graduating.
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