“‘‘Sideways’ Returns, Uncorked for Japan”
As Hwood looks to squeeze every last dollar out of every last movie project, they’ve now extended the remake obsession overseas:
HERE’S the pitch: Two guys, old college buddies. One’s a has-been TV actor, the other a never-been writer. The actor is about to get married, and the writer loves wine, so before the wedding they drive up the coast of California for a weeklong vineyard-visiting road trip.
Sound familiar? Perhaps that’s because it’s the premise for “Sideways,” the 2005 Oscar nominee for best picture (and winner for best adapted screenplay).
This time, though, it’s a little different: the bonding friends are Japanese.
After a couple of decades of taking foreign movies and remaking them as English-speaking movies (e.g., Diabolique, The Birdcage, The Vanishing), Hwood is reversing the flow: Remaking American movies as foreign-language films:
As film industries in China, Russia, Japan and India have grown exponentially, particularly when it comes to homegrown fare, United States studios have taken the phrase “Think globally, act locally” to heart. Nearly every studio has set up an international operation for producing and distributing original movies made in local languages. Now a handful of those studios are scouring their catalogs, seeking films (box-office smashes and middling performers alike) to remake for new audiences.
The Walt Disney Company is turning its “High School Musical” franchise into a cottage industry, redoing the teen song-and-dance phenomenon one country at a time. A new version of “Cellular,” the 2004 kidnapping thriller starring Kim Basinger, has already come out in China. And Japanese translations of the Patrick Swayze-Demi Moore blockbuster “Ghost” and the Melanie Griffith-Harrison Ford hit “Working Girl” are in development.
More remakes. Got me thinking. I wonder how many remakes there have been? So I went to Wikipedia and typed in “remake.” Check this out. There’s not just one webpage (A-M), there’s a second webpage (N-Z). But wait! There’s more! How about TV shows that became movie remakes. Hold on! There’s even more! English-language remakes of foreign language films.
It’s enough to make me go grab a bottle of cheap Merlot and get sideways!
Comment Archive