5 ms·
> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not, It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box offic
by munificent 5y ago
> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not,
It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020:
* Bad Boys for Life (sequel)
* Sonic the Hedgehog (videogame)
* Birds of Prey (comic book)
* Dolittle (book)
* The Invisible Man (book)
* The Call of the Wild (book)
* Onward (original)
* The Croods: A New Age (sequel)
* Tenet (original)
* Wonder Woman 1984 (sequal, comic book)
Two originals. Now go back 20 years:
* Mission: Impossible 2 (sequel)
* Gladiator (book)
* Cast Away (original)
* What Women Want (original)
* Dinosaur (original)
* How the Grinch Stole Christmas (book)
* Meet the Parents (remake)
* The Perfect Storm (book)
* X-Men (comic book)
* What Lies Beneath (original)
Four originals. Go back another 10 years:
* Ghost (original)
* Home Alone (original)
* Pretty Woman (original)
* Dances with Wolves (book)
* Total Recall (short story)
* Back to the Future Part III (sequel)
* Die Hard 2 (sequel)
* Presumed Innocent (book)
* Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (comic book)
* Kindergarten Cop (original)
Five originals. Another ten years to 1980:
* The Empire Strikes Back (sequel)
* 9 to 5 (original)
* Stir Crazy (original)
* Airplane! (original)
* Any Which Way You Can (sequel)
* Private Benjamin (original)
* Coal Miner's Daughter (original)
* Smokey and the Bandit II (sequel)
* The Blue Lagoon (book)
* The Blues Brothers (SNL sketch)
Five originals again. I'm going by top box-office gross here because I think that's a good proxy for what is successful. You can look at other years, but there is a very clear (but not overwhelming) trend towards movies based on familiar content. It's not clear whether studios are leading audiences or vice versa. Probably some iterative process of both.
There's also a clear trend away from dramas. I think that's because drama (and non-slapstick comedies) tend to rely heavily on specific cultural norms for their effect which makes them translate poorly. There is a very clear trend especially in the last decade or so of Hollywood focusing on movies that will also do well in China in particular.
- throwawayboise 5y agoAirplane was not strictly an original, it was a remake/spoof of Zero Hour from 1957 and more broadly spoofing the "disaster" film concept.
- selimthegrim 5y agoYou could also argue it was spoofing the Airport films which were based on books.
- QuercusMax 5y agoThere are a significant number of scenes in Airplane that are directly lifted from Zero Hour. I haven't checked recently, but I think it's almost a scene-for-scene remake in many respects.
- PopePompus 5y agoHere's a video comparing the two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-v2BHNBVCs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-v2BHNBVCs It really was a remake of a "serious" drama as a comedy.
- selimthegrim 5y agoI didn’t realize Hailey was behind both.
- newsclues 5y agoSpoofs are derivative works but original works compared to remakes or sequels.
- roland35 5y agoInteresting lists, although I think maybe books based movies are more towards original side if we map this as a spectrum instead of a binary value :) New books with great stories are written every year, and I would rather watch that than spider man reboot #4 honestly.
- Apocryphon 5y agoOn the other hand, would you want to watch another big-budget Harry Potter side story spin-off (Fantastic Beasts), an adaptation of bad or forgettable YA novel franchises (Twilight, Divergent, Percy Jackson), Fifty Shades of Grey, or the umpteenth adaptation of some Jane Austen novel? Book adaptations themselves are a spectrum of originality and quality.
- munificent 5y ago> I think maybe books based movies are more towards original side I agree totally. I'd also score remakes as more original if the film being remade is significantly older.
- ttmb 5y ago> Here are the top ten box office films of 2020 But see, 2020 was an aberration. You have to look at 2019. Sequel, remake, sequel, sequel, comic, sequel, sequel/comic, remake, comic, sequel/remake, Oh. Oh no. Let's keep going for top 20, yeah? Sequel/remake, ORIGINAL, sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel, video game, ORIGINAL, comic, comic. (from boxofficemojo) 2 in the top 20. Let's keep going? ORIGINAL, remake, sequel-ish? sequel, sequel, (US) remake, ORIGINAL, sequel, ORIGINAL, remake, tv-to-film, ORIGINAL, comic, ORIGINAL, sequel, sequel, sequel, ORIGINAL, sequel, sequel, ... Let's stop there, but don't assume for a second that all the remakes and sequels are top-loaded - they may dominate the top of the chart but they go pretty far down it too.
- Apocryphon 5y agoLooks to be a different source from the OP, but let's go down the chart for 1980 past the top ten: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/1980/ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/1980/ Kramer vs. Kramer (book) Ordinary People (book) Popeye (comic) The Shining (book) Cheech and Chong's Next Movie (sequel) Caddyshack (original - franchise starter) Friday the 13th (original - franchise starter) Brubaker (book) The Jazz Singer (remake) Flash Gordon (sequel/remake) Bronco Billy (original) Raging Bull (book - biopic) Maybe you should go back a few decades until you can find a time when the top 20 were mostly originals. Would have to be before the Star Wars/Jaws blockbuster era, probably.
- munificent 5y ago> Maybe you should go back a few decades until you can find a time when the top 20 were mostly originals. Even if box office leaders were never mostly originals, there's still a very big difference between 50% and 20%.
- OJFord 5y agoDolittle is not the first time it's been adapted to film either. '67, '98, '01 (sequel), '06 (sequel).