Unhappily ever after

Abstract

[...]it is not enough to use state-of-the-art special effects; computer-generated imagery needs to be handled carefully. Since 1995 about a third of the top remakes have been based on foreign source material, including six of the top ten. For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter

“Snow White”, Disney’s live-action remake of a beloved animated film, had an icy reception before its release in cinemas on March 21st. A trailer posted three months ago has earned just 60,000 likes and over 1m dislikes. “If I saw this movie on a plane I would still walk out,” grumbled one YouTube user. “We thankfully have the technology nowadays to make the animation look worse than the original from 1937,” groaned another.

Among the remake’s many sins are seven in particular: the dwarves, who have been cheesily rendered with computer-generated imagery (CGI), after a row over whether it was politically correct to have actors with dwarfism in the roles. (In the face of criticism, Disney recast the film’s dwarves as “magical creatures”—whatever that means.) There is also the issue of Rachel Zegler, the actress chosen to play Snow White, who panned the original film as “extremely dated” and said that the prince “literally stalks” the princess. It turns out fans do not like it when a remake’s heroine villainises the classic film that inspired it.

By respinning familiar tales, remakes can offer studios a surer path towards commercial riches. In the amount of pushback and controversy it has faced, “Snow White” is unusual. But in another way the film reflects a current trend, which is for studios to reach further back in history for source material. From 2020 to 2024 the average age of the source films that new remakes were based on was 35. That is about 13 years older than from 2011 to 2015, according to our analysis of data from The Numbers, a film website.

What makes for a successful remake? It is a question on the minds of many Hollywood executives, as well as cinephiles. To answer it, The Economist analysed 200 remakes released since 1995; each had a minimum of 5,000 ratings on IMDb, an online movie database. (Our analysis only includes remakes of films, not adaptations of books.) Three lessons stand out.

First, it is not enough to use state-of-the-art special effects; computer-generated imagery needs to be handled carefully. Of the 20 worst remakes (as measured by IMDb audience ratings), half are horror films, in part because of their use of unconvincing special effects. In the fifth-worst-rated, a remake in 2005 of John Carpenter’s cult classic “The Fog” from 1980, a supernatural, vengeful fog descends on an island town off the coast of Oregon. Cheap shocks substitute for tension: viewers have complained that the fog moves too quickly and that ghosts in the fog (never clearly visible in the original) are hokey, a complaint also made by viewers about the dwarves in the new “Snow White”.

Second, comedies come with grave risks. This is the worst-performing genre for remakes, earning an average IMDb rating 1.5 points (out of ten) lower than the originals. Comedy remakes also tend to make the least at the box office. Not a single one significantly outshines the original film it was based on, according to audience ratings. It may be that viewers of comedies and horrors crave an element of surprise, which is hard to offer in a faithful remake, because audiences already know which gags and gasps to expect.

The best remakes get their inspiration from abroad. Since 1995 about a third of the top remakes have been based on foreign source material, including six of the top ten. So are the only two remakes to have won Academy Awards for Best Picture: “The Departed” (2006), based on a Hong Kong film, and “CODA” (2021), based on a French-Belgian one.

Unfamiliarity with the originals may mean that audiences come in with lower expectations and without any attachment to the original. Take “Bugonia”, starring Emma Stone, set to be released in November. It is an English-language remake of a South Korean film; instead of a male chief executive, the new story centres on a female one. However, audiences, lacking knowledge of the original, are unlikely to kick up a fuss about the change. The same cannot be said of the new “Snow White”, which seems destined for an unhappily-ever-after ending.

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