Why remaking foreign films is a one-way street
Story by Ryan Deto
Illustration by Anna Helland
The Magnificent Seven. Some Like It Hot. The Sound of Music. These three classic American films have amassed numerous awards, critical acclaim, and a permanent spot in the Hollywood film cannon. But they share a secret – they are not originally American, but remakes of foreign films. Even the contemporary classic The Departed, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2007, was a remake of Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs.
More than one hundred foreign films have been remade into American versions since the 1930s, including more than fifty from France. In the past year, several American films hold the title of foreign remake, including The Next Three Days (starring Russel Crowe) and The Tourist (starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie). The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Swedish film based on the popular novel, was released in Europe in February 2009; the American version will hit theaters December 2011. What drives this flick-flipping factory?
For Bobette Buster, foreign film expert and professor at University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, the answer is simple: money.
“We have an industry here,” she says. “We have a huge appetite for a product and a billion dollar development industry looking for a story.”
Buster explains that award-winning American films can take decades to complete. Unforgiven, the Oscar winner for Best Picture in 1993, was in production for seventeen years. In an industry that demands new movies at an accelerated rate, Hollywood often looks to the foreign market for ready-made scripts.
“The constant struggle is the industry needs projects now,” Buster says. “There is this huge, on-going search for the scripts that are ready for the screen.” In the case of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Swedish original already garnered critical success in Europe and America. The film also fits into the market sensation surrounding the novel, so for American production companies it’s a win-win.
“Production companies are always trying to strike while the fire is hot,” Buster says. “The number one thing that drives films is the market.”
Even with the sluggish American economy and the weakened value of the U.S. dollar, the American film industry makes more money than film industries in every other foreign market. American films also dominated the top selling movies abroad. On average, more than ten of the top twelve movies in the overseas box office every week are American. Most American remakes that enter the cinemas of their origin countries end up out-grossing the original film by the tens of millions.
Changing the image of a film can also be beneficiary to a new market. Buster explains that when March of the Penguins came out in France it was seen as a triumphant nature documentary that catered to a scientifically savvy crowd. When America released the film, with the recognizable voice of Morgan Freeman as narrator, they marketed it as a family movie and the film became a national phenomenon. “When you can convince them that their movie will reach a bigger audience, then it is easier for the film to be remade,” Buster says.
The highly organized structure of the American market sets it apart from foreign markets. American writers negotiate contracts early on, ensuring them royalties if their stories are ever remade in any form. According to Buster, the European market lacks this structure, making it easier for Americans to exploit the foreign industry by purchasing film rights and remaking them without the cost of royalties. “They are very vulnerable,” Buster says. “Artists are preyed upon by the market forces.”
Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of Miramax Studios, pioneered the practice of attending foreign film festivals, buying foreign movie rights for cheap, and remaking or editing them for American audiences, Buster says. This method has upset some foreign filmmakers; acclaimed Chinese director Feng Xiaogang did not appreciate his film being poached by the American film mogul. At the 2010 Shanghai International Film Festival, he called Weinstein “a cheater in the eyes of many Chinese moviemakers,” after Weinstein paid $500,000 for the rights to Xiogang’s The Banquet.
However, Buster says high-grossing films are necessary for the industry, even if they compromise artistic value. “The industry is like a supermarket. You need the flour and eggs to sell the high-end products,” she says.
Some American distribution companies have made it easier for producers like Weinstein. Music Box Films, founded in 2007 in Chicago, purchases theatrical rights from foreign films, such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, to show them in theaters throughout America. And while Program Director Brian Andreotti says the distributor was not created to help Hollywood remake films by avoiding foreign film festivals, he understands it can happen.
“No one doing foreign film distribution is doing it to make money, there just isn’t that big of a market for it,” Andreotti says. “We do it because we all have a passion for films.”
But one of Music Box’s films did succumb to the remake machine. The French film Tell No One was based on the American novel of the same name. The story was originally going to be an American thriller, but Hollywood passed on the script. In 2006, France penned its own script from the book and released the film to a mass of critical success. Music Box then bought the theatrical rights and it became America’s most popular foreign-language film in 2008. The American remake is now in production.
While American filmmakers face fewer obstacles in redoing foreign films, international filmmakers find remaking American movies almost impossible. Less than a dozen American films have been remade by foreign markets, including a Japanese version of the wine movie Sideways. German filmmaker Jörg Foth knows just how difficult this process can be. When Foth tried to remake the classic Elvis Presley film King Creole into a German play he failed. Not because he lacked directorial experience – Foth directed three feature-length films in Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall – but because his production company could not afford the rights to the American film.
“Every American film has a large audience with millions of dollars attached,” Foth says. “Every European film is a loss for the production company.”
This disparity means European filmmakers rarely have been able to afford the rights to American films. However, Europeans have used American films as inspirations for original films. Foth said that the German film Teenage Wolfpack was only made because director Georg Tressler saw the American movie Rock Around the Clock, which caused a significant stir in Germany.
The Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In was released in 2008 to immense critical acclaim. Steven Rea of Philadelphia Inquirer said the film was “up there with the bloodsucking classics.” In October 2010, an American version re-titled Let Me In was released, and while it received critical success, the film did not attract the same praise as its original.
Rumors have recently surfaced that Hollywood may remake the Italian classic The Bicycle Thief. Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times says, “The Bicycle Thief is so well-entrenched as an official masterpiece that it is a little startling to visit it again after many years and realize that it is still alive and has strength and freshness.” So why would any American filmmaker decide to remake this cinematic treasure? Buster answers again: money.
“If a beautiful classic is remade, then some of us will feel sad,” Buster says. “That is the tension for those of us who love movies and those who see an opportunity to make money.”

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Let the Right Film In