Film remakes that should stay on the storyboard

ORIGINALITY is hardly the hallmark of today’s film industry. The biggest film of 2017 at the American box office is a remake of “Beauty and the Beast”; it will be surpassed by “The Last Jedi”, which opens this week and is the squillionth episode of the Star Wars saga. The ten highest-grossing films in Hollywood this year are all sequels or remakes.As the film industry struggles to reverse a decline in box-office receipts (see ), it will keep returning to the comfort of the familiar. Franchises like Star Wars will steamroller on. Remakes are trickier. Well over 100 are thought to be in the works, from “Private Benjamin” to “Fantastic Voyage”. Some will get a 2018 twist: the mark in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”, a 1980s comedy about two con artists, is a tech billionaire. But not all. The following projects are rumoured to be under way in Hollywood. They suggest that remakes have their limits.