We know, you’re sick of Hollywood remakes and wish studios would just focus on fresh ideas.
But the following films actually deserve remakes. Some had great concepts that didn’t quite translate to the big screen, and others come from source material that simply deserves expansion.
These are the rare films that truly deserve remakes that could fulfill their potential.
Black Widow (1987)
The original Black Widow — not to be confused with the Marvel movie starring Scarlett Johansson — is a terrific neo-noir about a Department of Justice official (Debra Winger) who becomes obsessed with a mystery woman (Theresa Russell) who seems to have a habit of killing her husbands.
So why the remake? Why mess with a good thing?
In this case, it’s because the original Black Widow has a sapphic subtext that couldn’t be fully explored in the 1988 film. But in these more openminded times, a Black Widow remake could more openly explore the full nature of the the women’s interest in one another.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The original League of Extraordinary Gentleman, adapted from the comics by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, has one of the coolest concepts of any movie: A group of old-time literary characters, including Allan Quatermain, Nemo, Mina Harker, Dorian Gray, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and Tom Sawyer, band together for steampunk adventures in the Victorian Era.
The film suffered from poor reviews and a bit of an imbalance between the characters: Sean Connery was by far the biggest name, playing Quatermain, but his high salary prevented the filmmakers from casting similarly big stars to play the other key roles.
Imagine a modern adaptation stocked with a balanced mix of stars who also excel as character actors, like Cate Blanchett, Nicolas Cage, Christian Bale, Daniel Kaluuya, Bill Murray… you get the idea.
We’d actually love to see this IP in the hands of Wes Anderson.
John Carter (2012)
One of the oldest pieces of IP, based on the works of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter was adapted as a 2012 film that bombed.
Almost all of Burroughs’ stories in the John Carter series included “of Mars” in the title, and calling the film simply John Carter did nothing to tell audiences what it was about. That was just the start of the film’s marketing issues — the Washington Post‘s Michael Cavna said the film was one of Hollywood’s “biggest marketing flops ever.”
Taylor Kitsch was a good John Carter, but the film failed to explain what was special about John Carter — a century-old piece of sci-fi that influenced almost every sci-fi project that followed, including Star Wars. It should have been treated as an epic cinematic presentationo of a literary classic — like the Lord of the Rings movies — but instead it elicited shrugs.
The film also had a massive price tag, which means it’s unlikely anyone will take another swing at it anytime soon. But this was a case of the underlying material being good, and the flaws being in the execution.
World War Z (2013)
World War Z is a cool movie, and a totally serviceable zombie action story, led by Brad Pitt. It also did great box office, earning more than $500 million.
But the 2006 Max Brooks novel upon which the film is based is far superior: It uses a zombie outbreak as a pretext to analyze and critique geopolitics, various societal failures, and human nature itself. It’s a total page turner with a lot to say.
World War Z could easily be a multi-season HBO series in the vein of Game of Thrones. Its surface-level similarities with HBO’s The Last of Us and AMC’s The Walking Dead may hurt it — or help.
The Hollywood Reporter says an update of World War Z is on the priority list for potential reboots or remakes for Paramount, which is recently under new ownership.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
The 2017 film was inspired by the French science fiction comics series Valérian and Laureline, written by Pierre Christin, illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières. The series has been beloved since it debuted in 1967, but something was lost when Luc Besson translated it to the big screen.
The film follows Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) as they travel to Alpha, a city inhabited by thousands of species from different planets, and face a threat that could destroy the universe.
Besson, who personally financed and funded the roughly $180 million film, had previously made the delightfully crazy sci-fi epic The Fifth Element, so hopes were high.
But Valerian failed to impress at the box office, and critical reviews were mixed, though many appreciated that Besson had at least taken a big swing. A. O. Scott of The New York Times said the film “feels as if it were made up on the spot, by someone so delighted by the gaudy genre packaging at his disposal that he lost track of what was supposed to be inside.”
Perhaps someday Valerian, like The Fifth Element, will be regarded as a wildly fun watch. Either way, someone should take another shot at it.
Gaslight (1944)
Given the ubiquity of the term “gaslighting,” perhaps someone should remake the 1940 British film that popularized the term — the 1944 American version, starring Ingrid Bergman (above). Both are based on the 1938 play Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton.
All are about a young woman whose husband slowly tricks her into believing she is insane — a concept that is more relevant than ever at a time when reality is constantly bent by politicians, social media, artificial intelligence… the list goes on.
A remake of Gaslight might make us all nostalgic for an era when only our loved ones made us question our sanity.
USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (2016)
One of the highlights of Jaws, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary, comes when sea captain Quint (Robert Shaw) recounts the true story of the USS Indianapolis.
After delivering the atomic bomb used to bomb Hiroshima, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by the Japanese Imperial Navy. Roughly 300 crewman sunk with the ship in the Philippine Sea, while the rest spent five days in shark-infested water, fighting for their lives.
It was almost the basis of Jaws 2, which Spielberg once envisioned as a prequel. He would have done an amazing job. It could also be a modern-day Christopher Nolan movie with a A-list cast — a kind of spiritual sequel to his film Oppenheimer.
But the version of the story we’ve seen so far is Mario Van Peebles’ USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage. It bombed, and received negative reviews that mostly criticized the CGI sharks. Honestly, it isn’t bad. Nicholas Cage is good as Captain Charles B. McVay III, the real-life figure who faced a court martial for losing his ship.
But the story could be better told. The film spends relatively little time on the central drama — the men trying to survive shark attacks — and too much time in a military court proceeding.
If it’s ever remade, we’d welcome Cage back in the lead.
Betrayed (1988)
The second Debra Winger movie on our list of deserving remakes, Betrayed follows her playing an FBI agent who infiltrates a farming community to learn who is responsible for the murder of a Jewish radio host.
Soon she falls for Gary Simmons (Tom Berenger) the seemingly very decent and kind local father suspected of the crime. She begins to believe the FBI is wrong about him. But he turns out to be a monster when he takes her hunting — and the target is a Black man.
Betrayed has one of the best movie setups — a person infiltrates a group and then becomes troublingly sympathetic to those being infiltrated – but the calibration and structure of the film feels off. The lack of prominent non-white characters also feels strange, leaving the very tricky racial dynamics mostly in the hands of white people.
Still, we love the idea of a modern reworking of the film at a time when white supremacists often barely bother to hide their beliefs.
Logan’s Run (1976)
We love Logan’s Run‘s very 1970s vision of a future in which everyone is killed at the age of 30 in order to preserve scare resources. The film is one of the best at pulling off the trick of introducing an apparent utopia that soon proves to be a dystopia.
Current cynicism — or is it realism? — about the state of the world make this a perfect time for an update.
There was a brief Logan’s Run TV show in 1977, and plans for a Logan’s Run movie remake a decade ago, with Ryan Gosling and X-Men screenwriter Simon Kinberg attached at various points. But past reboot incarnations face a few obstacles.
First, the success of the X-Men spinoff movie Logan could create some brand confusion, and Gosling is now 44, even if he looks younger.
Still, this is one of those remakes we think would both fascinate modern audiences and draw much-deserved attention to the original.
The Dark Tower (2017)
Steven King’s Dark Tower series encompasses eight novels and a novella — enough for a very long series.
Unfortunately, the 2017 film adaptation, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, carves things down to the very bare essentials. While we always appreciate a tight 95-minute runtime, in this case the story expunges all the asides and backstory that makes King’s Dark Tower series so compelling.
Luckily, a Dark Tower TV series is in development from Mike Flanagan, a master of King adaptations. Unfortunately, Flanagan is very busy — his recent projects include the just-released King adaptation The Life of Chuck.
If you like this list of movies that deserve remakes, you may also like our list of 15 Classic Movies That Have Never Had Sequels or Remakes — and Never Should.
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Main image: Jenny Agutter in a publicity image for Logan’s Run. United Artists.