Instead of having remakes...

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by McCrutchy

So I've been thinking, and I came upon an idea that I don't think has really been tried here in the USA. The major impetus for this idea was seeing the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, which, regardless of whether you liked it or not, was nonetheless a remake of a movie that at the time of the remake's conception, was less than 25 years old. And what happened?

New Line wanted to keep their Texas-Chainsaw franchise going, but, like the F13 remake, was limited to horror franchises the studio already owned.

So here is my thought: When considering a remake of a more recent film, why not just re-release the original film, back into theaters, in a nationwide release, complete with new trailers and TV spots, as if it were a "new" movie?

They tried that, it flopped:
- During the '97-'98 craze for the Star Wars:SE films, Paramount thought any 20th-anniversary would attract 'Boomer audiences, re-released "Grease", and no one noticed. (It quickly mutated into the "Sing-along screening" craze, which was soon balkanized into gay-only audiences.)
- The Bible-belt push for re-releasing "The Passion" every year as a "tradition" self-destructed quickly when it only played 42 screens the second time around and died out in a week.

As far as I can tell, since the advent of home video, wide re-releases in the USA have been limited to WB classics, like the 1999 re-release of Gone with the Wind, or the "20th Anniversary Edition" of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, or classics that have been newly altered, like the original Star Wars trilogy in 1997 or The Exorcist in 2000

Pretty much: Nowadays, the only times we see old movies "already out on disk" in theaters are when the studio wants to hype a new disk restoration (like with Disney or Warner's WOz), or during Oscar-nomination time for the movies we missed--Otherwise, the rule is, "No restored scenes, no ticket."

...It's the trade-off we've had to accept for having home-theater, and especially Blu-ray: It's hard enough to get audiences into theaters for NEW movies nowadays.