8 Movie Remakes That Were a Different Genre From the Original

4 days ago 8

Published Mar 20, 2026, 8:55 AM EDT

Jeremy has more than 2300 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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Remakes, right? They keep happening, and it doesn’t seem to matter how many people complain about them, because maybe money is all that matters. They're not always terrible, though, and they’re sometimes even a little daring, since some of the better and more worthwhile remakes out there shake things up in terms of style, tone, and sometimes even genre.

What follows is a look at remakes that set their sights on belonging to a different genre than the films they aimed to remake. Some of these examples involve films that fit into multiple genres, so there might be a bit of crossover (like, a samurai movie being remade into a Western, but both also counting as action movies; that kind of thing). Also, animation isn't being counted as a genre here, so that disqualifies any number of Disney live-action remakes, like Beauty and the Beast (2017) and anything that isn't The Lion King (both the 1994 and 2019 versions are animated; just a different sort of animation).

8 'The Mummy' (1999)

Remake of 'The Mummy' (1932)

Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser in 1999's The Mummy.

It would be a stretch to call the monster movies of the 1930s put out by Universal were action/adventure films, though they weren’t going for that sort of thing, and they were engaging as horror movies made on more modest budgets instead. See The Mummy (1932), for example, which is a horror movie with a slight amount of adventure genre elements, while The Mummy (1999) is more of an action/adventure movie with only a little by way of actual horror in it.

The Mummy (1999) is a little more Indiana Jones than it is The Mummy (1932).

If you're young, or easily scared, maybe you'd disagree with the horror label being applied by all, but The Mummy (1999) is a little more Indiana Jones than it is The Mummy (1932). It’s also clear that it was made with a pretty beefy budget, while The Mummy (1932), even for its time, felt like it was modestly budgeted ($196,000, which is about $4.7 million in 2026, when adjusted for inflation).

7 'King Kong' (2005)

Remake of 'King Kong' (1933)

Kong roaring at a dinosaur in the 2005 version of King Kong directed by Peter Jackson

The best giant monster movie made before 1954 was quite comfortably the original King Kong, and it’s only 1954’s Godzilla (plus some of the other amazing movies in the series and various other films influenced by said series) that rival it. King Kong (2005) was also a monster movie, admittedly. The 1933 original feels pretty action-packed and adventure-heavy for its time, and so too is the 2005 version definable as an action/adventure movie.

So, why put it here? Well, Peter Jackson’s remake is also an epic, because it does what the first movie did, but on a much larger scale and with a significantly longer runtime… it’s almost double the length of the 1933 version, in other words, with 187 minutes absolutely dwarfing the original’s 100-minute runtime. Bigger might not automatically be better, because Jackson’s version is both thrilling (at times) and flawed, but at least the scope of it all – and its foray into the epic genre – stops it from feeling too much like a simple retread.

6 'A Star Is Born' (1954)

Remake of 'A Star Is Born' (1937)

Judy Garland as Esther in A Star is Born (1954)

If you count every new version of A Star Is Born as a remake, then the 1976 and 2018 versions don’t really rewrite what the 1954 version was going for. All these movies fit into the romance, drama, and musical genres, to some extent, mixing things up in terms of what sort of music is featured, all the while also having progressively more modern settings to reflect the times in which each one was made.

But if you go back to the first time a star was born, in 1937, that one was a romantic drama without the musical elements. Both the main characters in the original A Star Is Born were actors at different stages of their respective careers, with the 1954 version having the female lead be a singer, and the male lead be an actor whose popularity is waning (the next two films of the same name embraced the music side of things a little more, with both lead characters in those respective films being musicians/singers).

5 'Little Shop of Horrors' (1986)

Remake of 'The Little Shop of Horrors' (1960)

Rick Moranis looking at his deadly plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

In 1960, there was a low-budget horror comedy called The Little Shop of Horrors, and then that movie got made into a stage musical in 1982, with that stage musical then being made into a movie in 1986. That whole progression might make it not entirely accurate to say that the 1986 movie is a remake of the 1960 one, but you can’t have the more recent one without that older one, and the progression of the story throughout both movies is very much comparable.

With Little Shop of Horrors (1986), it’s also a full-on musical, which is the one big difference, though, despite the singing, both movies fit fairly neatly into the category of horror-comedy. For what it’s worth, the 1986 version is also so much better, but for a low-budget sort of thing (and compared to a few other lesser Roger Corman-directed movies), the one from the early 1960s isn't too bad.

4 'Sorcerer' (1977)

Remake of 'The Wages of Fear' (1953)

Roy Scheider's Jackie staring ahead in Sorcerer.

The Wages of Fear has held up rather spectacularly for a movie that’s almost three-quarters of a century old, and it’s still a rather mortifying watch, even without being a particularly violent movie. It’s also something that takes its time, because while it is a thriller owing to how suspenseful it manages to be, there’s a runtime of about 2.5 hours, and it’s a slow-burn with the characters all literally having to move very slowly (they have to transport explosives through dangerous territory).

The premise is maintained in the oddly named remake, sure, and that remake, Sorcerer, is also a thriller, just with a bit more action and a shorter runtime that also contributes to the pace feeling faster (the original’s 2.5 hours, and Sorcerer is two hours long). If the remake here is more of an action/thriller film rather than a drama/thriller film, that’s admittedly not too dramatic an example, but it is reflected and felt when you watch both movies and get a sometimes similar yet also sometimes different experience from one versus the other.

3 'Scarface' (1983)

Remake of 'Scarface' (1932)

If you weren’t fond of King Kong (2005) being mentioned earlier because you don’t feel “epic” is a significant enough genre, then you might also be raising an eyebrow right about now (the funk soul brother) at Scarface (1983) being here. Yes, it’s a remake of the 1932 film of the same name, and both movies are gangster films that tell a very direct rise-and-fall story about one criminal who wants it all, has it for a time, and then loses everything, plus more, somehow.

With the 1983 version of Scarface, though, it embraces being an epic gangster film rather than “just” a more standard or modestly sized gangster film. There’s a remake here that’s only 10 minutes shy of the three-hour-mark, while the 1932 Scarface is only a few minutes over 90, so it’s not far off being double the length (also like the 1933 and 2005 versions of King Kong). Further, you could probably argue Scarface (1983) leans more into the action genre than the original. And though it’s not necessarily related to genre, the content in the ‘80s version of Scarface is much different – and far more extreme – than what was found in the ‘30s version, but that’s probably to be expected after 50+ years, with audiences having been desensitized to what was probably once shocking in the first half of the 20^th century.

2 'A Fistful of Dollars' (1964)

Remake of 'Yojimbo' (1961)

Clint Eastwood looks into the distance as Man With No Name in A Fistful of Dollars

A Fistful of Dollars is both one of the best and most infamous remakes of all time, seeing as it was unofficially a remake of Yojimbo, and that led to a successful lawsuit on the part of Toho, the company that produced Yojimbo. In that 1961 film, a mysterious figure comes into a town and defeats two warring factions by playing them against each other, and then in 1964’s A Fistful of Dollars, the same thing happens, but it’s got a Western setting.

Both movies are worth watching, and A Fistful of Dollars, even if made questionably, did contribute to Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, and Ennio Morricone all getting more exposure and popularity, leading to two even better Westerns (making up a sort of trilogy with A Fistful of Dollars) and then much more beyond 1966 for all three, of course. Sorry to say this, but in the long run, plagiarism might well have been a good thing here, in this specific instance.

1 'The Magnificent Seven' (1960)

Remake of 'Seven Samurai' (1954)

If you haven’t seen Seven Samurai before, then first of all, you should (don’t let the age or the runtime be a turn-off), and then second of all, you probably have seen something influenced by it. There’s that part in Casino where Joe Pesci’s character tells Robert De Niro’s that “You only exist out here because of me,” plus some inevitable curse words, and it’s easy to imagine Seven Samurai saying that (minus the swearing) to various action movies released in its wake, and saying it to The Magnificent Seven most of all.

Unlike the case with A Fistful of Dollars and Yojimbo, The Magnificent Seven was an official remake of Seven Samurai, but like that previous example, The Magnificent Seven takes an originally samurai-themed story and makes it a Western. It’s not as good as Seven Samurai, but Seven Samurai is also one of the absolute greatest films ever made, so The Magnificent Seven “merely” being a very good Western instead isn't so bad in the overall scheme of things.