8 Movie Remakes That Were a Different Genre From the Original

They’re not always terrible, and they’re sometimes even a little daring, since some of the better and more worthwhile remakes shake things up in terms of style, tone, and sometimes even genre. This piece looks at remakes that set their sights on belonging to a different genre than the films they aimed to remake.

Take The Mummy: the 1932 film plays more as a modestly budgeted horror movie, while the 1999 remake leans into action/adventure and feels a little more Indiana Jones than Universal’s original. King Kong’s 1933 original already felt action-packed, but Peter Jackson’s 2005 version expands the scope into an epic, nearly doubling the runtime and changing the experience even while remaining a monster movie.

A Star Is Born shows how a romantic drama from 1937 evolved into later versions that embraced musical elements, and Little Shop of Horrors moved from a low-budget 1960 horror comedy into a full-on musical by 1986 after a stage adaptation.

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