I was look at Bad News Bears post and it make me think about movies I seen two of same film or maybe more and I wonder if second movie is better than first.  Not a sequal film but if is the same story and make it a second time.

Movie I like second much more than first is christmas movie = HOLIDAY AFFAIR.  I seen old one on TCM and I think new one that got color is much better.

I also like second time SHAGGY DOG more than first. 

But two movies I like first time lots more is YEARLING and PETER PAN.

OK, compare different versions of The Browning Version

and different versions of Misunderstood

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This was an excellent question Jasen! 

I went back and did some research and found that I have seen multiple versions of over 40 stories!

The only constant I see is that I always like the original movie better if the remake is done in another country. As a result Hosenhaus, this makes me more of a fan of Incompreso than of Misunderstood. It's been many years since I've seen either version although I will say that I remember the ending of the Italian film having more impact than the American one.

For the record Jasen here are the stories which I have seen multiple versions....

Stories I like the original film best

Les Comperes/Father's Day
Ransom
Cheaper By the Dozen
Incompreso/Misunderstood
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Penrod & Sam
Tuck Everlasting
Spoorloos/Vanishing
The Getaway
Hansel & Gretel
Le grand chemin/Paradise
Flipper
Miracle on 34th Street
The Miracle Worker
Klatretøsen/Catch That Kid
The Hideaways/From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Un indien dans la ville/Jungle 2 Jungle
The Private War of Major Benson/Major Payne
Pollyanna
The Prince and The Pauper (I've seen 1962 & 2001 versions)

The best examples of movies I liked WAY WAY MORE than their remakes would be The Biscuit Eater, The Bad News Bears and Village of the Damned.

Stories I like the remake best

Black Beauty
The Browning Version
Lord of the Flies
The Stone Boy
Jacob Two-Two & The Hooded Fang
Heaven Can Wait/Here Comes Mr. Jordan
The Railway Children
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory

Finally, some stories I've seen more than 2 versions of; I put my favorite version in bold

Peter Pan (1924, 1953,2003)
Oliver/Oliver Twist (1922, 1933, 1948, 1968, 1997)
The Secret Garden (1949, 1975, 1987, 1993)
The Dog of Flanders (1935, 1959, 1999)
Freaky Friday/Summer Switch (1976, 1983, 2003)
Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936, 1980, 2003)
The Christmas Carol/Scrooge (1938, 1951, 1970, 1984, 2004)
The Champ/The Clown/All About Ah-Long (1931, 1952, 1979, 1989)
The Innocents/Turn of the Screw/The Nightcomers/Presence of Mind (1961, 1972, 1992, 1999)

I think most people will prefer the first version of the films that they see as these films set the standard for what the story is all about. The remake has to work harder to leave a favorable impression. If a person didn't like the first film, they probably wouldn't see the remake anyway. 

Zabladowski I got very much surprise see so many movies make it two times and more surprise when see movies get made lots times.  I know Oliver Twist and David Copperfield make it many times but I never know Freaky Friday is three times and the Champ four times.

Some movies on list I never seen none and I hope some day can see at least one and hope both too.  It is especialy Penrod and Sam  and also Jacob Two-Two and Hooded Fang.

I never know make movie Stone Boy more than one time it is very good story.

Thank you for make long list Zabladowski it make me know lots more movies that got made.

That's interesting Quantum.  8)

Vice Versa is as much a remake as some of the ones on my list. I wasn't aware that it had been made twice before. I just assumed it was a Freaky Friday ripoff. 


Jasen,

My Freaky Friday remakes include Summer Switch where the characters who were switching were Ben (Apeface) and his father. Ben was played by Scott Schwartz. There's also been a 1995 version of Freaky Friday which I haven't seen.

The Champ remakes are similar. Only the 1931 and 1979 versions are called The Champ and feature a boxer.
The Clown turns the father character into a standup comedian who gets his big break by appearing on television; All About Ah-Long is a Hong Kong version where the father is a motorcycle racer. Despite these differences if you watched all versions, you would know it's the same story. Ah Long and Champ 1979 are on DVD. The others are on VHS.

Jacob Two Two is on DVD (new version) and VHS (old) although the old one is out of print and hard to find.
I saw both Penrod movies on TCM. I don't know that they've been shown recently. I presume that due to disturbing racial elements the films don't play often. Did you know that Billy Gray's character in On Moonlight Bay and By The Light of the Silvery Moon is based on Penrod? Some of his bits in those films are taken right from the original stories.

The original Stone Boy was a teleplay starring Luke Halpin (Flipper!) and is next to impossible to see. 

speaking of remakes - there's going to be a new "the omen".

The Sunday Times - Ireland
July 24, 2005

Irish director to resurrect The Omen

Jan Battles

IT terrorised a generation in the 1970s. Now the spawn of Satan is being resurrected by Hollywood for a new version of The Omen, which will be directed by an Irishman.

The classic 1976 horror film is being re-made as The Omen 666 in time for a symbolic release date — June 6, 2006. Twentieth Century Fox has chosen John Moore, a Dundalk native, to direct the $40m (€33m) movie about the arrival of the antichrist into the home of an unsuspecting family.

Moore is hoping to cast some Irish actors in the film alongside Hollywood stars, and hopes to audition Irish children for the role of Damien, the demonic child who does not speak a line in the film. Harvey Stephens, the child who played the original Damien, became a property developer in Kent.

Moore has been based in Los Angeles for the past five years since being discovered by Hollywood making advertisements in Dublin. After seeing his $1m television commercial for Sega’s Dreamchaser video game system in America, movie executives at Twentieth Century Fox hired him to direct Behind Enemy Lines, an action blockbuster set during the Balkan war starring Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson.

He followed up with a remake of Flight of the Phoenix, about survivors of a plane crash in the Mongolian desert, with Dennis Quaid in the role played by Jimmy Stewart in the original.

Moore, a former student of the College of Commerce, Rathmines, is due to start shooting The Omen 666 in eastern Europe on October 3. He had tried to have the film shot in Ireland but in the end it proved too expensive.

“I had a look at Ireland and the Irish Film Board did a hell of a job trying to make it work here but the euro versus the dollar was just too strong,” said Moore, who was stopping over in Ireland yesterday en route from New York, where he was auditioning cast. He will travel on to Prague and Budapest to scout locations for the movie.

Moore is working to very tight deadlines in order to make the release date. “We are going big time for the whole 666 marketing gimmick,” he said. The number refers to the mark of the devil found on the head of Damien.

The original film starred Gregory Peck as an ambassador to the United States whose wife, played by Lee Remick, has a stillborn child. Without her knowledge, he substitutes another baby as theirs. After a few years grisly deaths begin to happen; the child’s nanny hangs herself and a priest is speared to death in a freak accident. It turns out the child is the son of Satan and can only be killed with the seven daggers of Megiddo.

Moore is aware that fans of the original will not be keen on a new version. “There are a lot of hardcore fans that are going to want to burn my house down when they hear that I’m going to remake it but that comes with the job,” he said.

The 34-year-old, who has a three-picture deal with Fox, was only asked quite recently by the studio executives if he would be interested in directing the remake. “I was a huge fan of the original and I think the time is good to re-do it so I said, ‘Let’s go’.

“There are a couple of new twists. Fans of the original won’t be disappointed. It’s very true to the original but it has a more modern context.”

Moore graduated from Rathmines in 1990, where he was a classmate of Damien O’Donnell, the award-winning director of East is East. The two ran a production company, Clingfilms, and remain friends, although Moore’s career arc making big-budget action movies is quite different from that of O’Donnell, who gets more critical acclaim.

Although he visits Dundalk occasionally, Moore spends most of his time in Los Angeles where he has a home. “That’s just the way it worked out with the kind of movies I make, they’re all pretty mainstream, commercial movies. I enjoy making commercial movies. I like putting bums on seats. I get a kick out of an audience having a good time,” he said.

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I liked the original version of Lord of the Flies better. I thought the dark, depressing nature of the movie was brought out better in the first, perhaps mainly because it was in black and white. The music score helped too, especially at the start. I thought the actors kind of equalled out.

there's a remake of `bad news bears` out now.

...Thornton stars as a hard-drinking (natch), hard-living exterminator by trade who gets bribed to coach a hopelessly inept junior baseball team all the way to a championship game.

"It's a classic underdog story," said Thornton, "and we hope a little modernised and hipper than the first film, because that's what kids want in their movies now.

"It came my way very straightforwardly. My manager called me up and said, 'We had this idea. What do you think about doing a remake of Bad News Bears? And I'd get the guys from Bad Santa to write it.' It just seemed like a natural, you know, my kind of part.

"I loved the original movie, and I loved Walter Matthau in it. Big shoes to fill, and I'm not big on remakes, but I figured we could update it in a way that would keep the integrity of the first one."

As in the original, the film features a cast of children all spouting swear words and obscenities; but the film-makers were careful not to include too many profanities, and there is not an f-word in sight.

Thornton's character, Morris Buttermaker, is a boozy, foul- mouthed has-been, the kind of role that's not too far removed from Bad Santa.

"We wanted it to be edgy enough for adults to enjoy, but we still have a PG-13 rating on this.

"But you know, today kids watch South Park and all these shows, and this sort of humour is not strange to them. A lot of children talk like that in real life. Certainly a lot of my kids' friends talk like that, although mine don't so much."

He pauses. "Actually, that's not true. My 11-year-old (Harry) does talk like that - he's the wild one, but my 12-year-old (William) is very polite and always has been.

Children know more now, I think. They are exposed to so much on TV and, to be honest, I think violence in mainstream movies is way worse."

Thornton happily confesses to being an indulgent dad, in contrast to his own upbringing in Arkansas by a strict father.

"He was pretty tough the whole time, and he died when he was 45, so I never got to know him that well.

"Me, on the other hand, I'm so sappy it's ridiculous. I'm always hugging my kids and they tell me they're not babies any more."

Thornton's two sons are by his fourth wife, Pietra Cherniak, who divorced him in 1997. He also has another daughter, Amanda, in her mid-twenties, by his first wife.

Thornton says he thought about Amanda a lot during the shooting of the film, as his character has an estranged relationship with his teenage daughter.

"We have a really good relationship these days, but she didn't grow up with me, so we were pretty much strangers for years. A few years later we reconnected, and it's really good now."

Bad News Bears is probably one of only a small handful of Billy Bob Thornton movies that the actor's own children can probably enjoy - technically, his sons are a couple of years too young to be allowed to see it, but one suspects he's made an exception for their entertainment.

Personally, he hopes the movie proves a summer hit with family audiences.

"I hope the baby boomers who loved this movie originally will come to see it, because they remember the original movie and they'd like to see a remake of it," he smiles. "And I hope they bring their kids, because the kids haven't seen the original, and this is a little hipper. But I also hope that they come away from the movie feeling that it's like that classic underdog story.

"I guess the movie has a message of sorts. It's like no matter who you are, if you put everything you have into something, maybe you can change your life.

"It's a classic thing in movies. The kids who are no-hopers taking on the world. And it's about the guy who's tired and worn out, and doesn't really see a whole lot of future, suddenly getting reinvigorated and rejuvenated. And that's definitely what happens to Buttermaker in this movie."

Preparing for his Bad News Bears role wasn't difficult, since, admits Thornton, "I don't mind a smoke every now and then. And I've been known to take a drink occasionally."
He was particularly pleased that the movie features real baseball action.

"Having been a baseball player myself growing up and an athlete in general, you get snobby about it a little bit," he laughs. "So we wanted the baseball to look real. Obviously, it's a little bit tricky, because our team's not supposed to be that good.

"So you have to show that they're not very good, but that they improve. And these kids did a beautiful job of looking bad in the beginning and improving as we went along. And because we wanted to make sure that the baseball plays were realistic, we had baseball experts on the set, plus the lead actor and Richard Linklater, the director, were baseball players."...

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