Ebook: East Asian Film Remakes

Considers the remake from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives and positions it alongside other serialized cultural forms

• Examines the historical significance of the remake in revitalizing local industries and breathing life into established film genres (e.g., action-adventure, crime drama, romantic comedy, the Western, etc.)
• Draws attention to previously overlooked motion pictures produced in East Asia and acknowledges the significant contributions of several prolific yet neglected filmmakers
• Re-evaluates canonical texts and offers fresh assessments of legendary auteurs such as Ozu Yasujiro, Yu Hyun-mok, Miike Takashi, Johnnie To, and Stephen Chow
• Showcases the role of remakes in forging cross-cultural alliances — both within and beyond the East Asian region — while pointing toward prospects of increased transnational coproductions in the coming years

This wide-ranging, historically grounded exploration of motion picture remakes produced in East Asia brings together original contributions from experts in Chinese, Hong Kong, Japanese, South Korean, and Taiwanese cinemas and puts forth new ways of thinking about the remaking process as both a critically underappreciated form of artistic expression and an economically motivated industrial practice. Exploring everything from ethnic Korean filmmaker Lee Sang-il’s Unforgiven (2013), a Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood’s Western of the same title, to Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid (2016), a Chinese slapstick reimagining of Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989) and Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale, East Asian Film Remakes contributes to a better understanding of cinematic remaking across the region and offers vital alternatives to the Eurocentric and Hollywood-focused approaches that have thus far dominated the field.