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REC remake article

Looking at the film industry we often see a lot of remakes which were made for many different reasons. These cold include keeping up with society and its changes or to simply make more money. The remake I will be looking at is REC into Quarantine. This was a very popular remake with its fans. 

REC is a well known a famous Spanish horror film that was filmed using the hand held camera technique. Due to its huge success it was remade in English to attract a larger fan base. 

REC was released by a small independent company who were called Filmax however due to the company only being independent they could not afford to release the film world wide so it was only released around Europe. 

Screen Gems, a subsidiary of Sony then remade this film into Quarantine, bought the rights from REC and made more profit from both of the films as they were able to do more things with the production, exhibition and distribution of the film. Also, being vertically integrated they were able to profit from all three of these things. 

The original film was directed by two Spanish men, Jamie Balaguero and Paco Plaza. Balaguero actually stars in the film which shows the passion that went in to the film to the fans and audience. It was released in 2007 and had a small budget of only 1.5 million euros as it was only a small independent company. Over all the film made the surprising profit of over 30 million euros which shows just how very successful it was. 

Sequals were made as it was so successful and a third is in the making now which has a much larger budget than the previous three. 

I would say that this film was so popular amongst its audience because of how real it looked. This is due to the hand held camera technique mentioned earlier. It attracted more fans as the realism scared people. The profit shows that this is what people like now, when to start with they weren't extremely familiar with it. 

Quarantine was then made which also proved popular amongst its audience. This time the film was in English so for all the people who didn't bother to watch the film as they did not want to read the subtitles, they now didn't have to as they had it all spoken to them and this meant it had an even larger audience. 

It was directed by John Edward Dowdle who is known for making horror films and released a year after REC was as Screen Gems who were the distributor thought that this would be the right time to make more money, and they did. 

This ties in with vertical integration. Filmax did not have enough money to distribute this film word wide so Sony bought the rights and did it themselves and a year later a new film is made under Screen Gems, a subsidiary of Sony. 

Quarantine is a remake that did very well taking into account that the original was such a hugely popular film. Its budget was 12 million and in the end the total profit for the film was 41 million which shows just how popular it was once again, and even more so due to the fact that it could be heard in English. 

Synergy was used to promote the films so posters and trailers were made so people could see bits of the film and know what they were going to be watching. 

Another feature which makes these films so popular is the fact that they are very similar, even down to the front cover promotional work for the films. This tells the audience that is doesn't really matter what version they watch, overall they will be very much the same. 

To keep the element of surprise, Quarantine was changed ever so little so the original REC fans would have a something different to see and not get bored. 

Overall all the factors in both films have all come together to make them very popular with great profits. 

Judge Dredd Remake Article

Judge Dredd is another famous remake which has recently been made into the film, Dredd. The original was released in 1995 and starred the very famous actor Sylvester Stallone. Using a big name like this is a great example of Star Theory. The producers were obviously hoping that a big star like this would attract a larger audience and they were correct. 

Danny Cannon had a budget of $90 millions to use, this shows that the production company had big plans for this film to be a high budget and high profit one. However the over all profits for the film were only $113,493,481 which probably isn't as high as they had originally hoped. 

The film also received a lot of bad reviews, mostly about it not sticking to the original comic which is where most of the original fan base had come from. 

It was produced, distributed and exhibited by Walk Disney Studios Motion Pictures and is about the earth becoming a waste land. The population of the earth live in mega cities and a lot of crimes take place in them. Therefore a justice system has to be put into place and judges are in control. The strongest judge is called Joseph Dredd who later goes to prison for murder.
He then finds out that it is actually somebody with the same DNA as him that did the murder so sets out to find him. 

In 2013 the remake, Dredd was released which stuck more to the comic. It is based on the same story as the original, people living in mega cities and the earth being turned into a wasteland. Dredd is the new judge who has been given the task of getting rid of the Slow-Mo drug and training Cassandra Anderson who has psychic abilities.
Whilst doing this they have to stop the leader Mo-Mo. 

This film was directed by Pete Travis who is known for making action films. It cost 50 million to make however it only made just over 13 million which was a huge loss to the company. 

It was distributed by two production companies, Entertainment Film Distributors and Lionsgate as the first is only an independent film company and not having enough money to actually release the film alone. 

There are big differences in the two films, one being the colours used in the film. The cinematographer for the film was Anthony Dod Mantle who has worked on a variety of films and won awards, this helped. 

The film was produced in South Africa's Johannesburg and Cape Town as it was a more practical and cost effective shooting location. 

Alex Garland was in regular contact with John Wagner to establish the type of direction they would be going in when making the film. 

There are a lot of action shots used in the film to really tie it in to the genre and typical conventions like shooting and blood are used. 

There is a large amount of slow-motion techniques used in the film which makes it really dramatic. This meant separating the colours and objects in the scene and taking them in different directions with hue and saturation. 

Carrie Remake Article

Remaking films is very popular with producers. There is already a direct target audience for them, so all there is left to do is the production and distribution. The 2013 version of Carrie is a good example of this. It started off as a Stephan King book which was very popular. The original film which was produced in 1976 was directed by Brian De Palma who was already famous for making horror movies. and distributed by United Artists (a subsidiary of MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) made huge takings in the box office which amounted to $33,800,800 after a small budget of $1,800,00 to make. The popularity of the film no doubt helped with the decision to remake the film for Director Kimberly Pierce. This was made in 2013 and had a budget $30,00,000, much more than the original cost to create. The film was however not as popular in box office takings and only managed to bring in $5,266,619. At the time it was voted one of the scariest films ever made. 

Carrie is a film based on the main character, Carrie White who is a shy teenage girl who after being brought up in isolation, doesn’t find it easy making friends. After being humiliated in the showers at school another girl takes pity on her and gets her boyfriend to invite her to the prom. This irritates another girl who then plans to ruin this special day for Carrie in front of the whole school. This takes a turn for the worst when nobody expects her to suddenly change and show her gift to everyone resulting in multiple disasters. 

With the film being hugely popular it had merchandise made which also helped to promote the film. Types of merchandise made were t-shirts, action figures and s sound track. This being an example of synergy. 

Kimberly Pierce decided to do a remake of Carrie in 2013, following its popularity in the seventies because she found the original story so great. She see’s how we can all relate to Carrie White. We all want to fit in and be accepted, and are all a little crazy at times when this doesn’t happen.
She cast Chloe Mortez as Carrie which is a great example of Star Theory; any fans that Mortez already has will want to go and watch the films that she is in, whether thats their preferred genre or not. 

The target audience for Carrie is teenagers and young adults and casting Chloe in this role fits the target profile well because of her looks and acting styles. Using an actress like this helps keep the film up to date and modern like Kimberly Pierce wanted to do. She also says that she wanted to put much more focus on Carrie’s powers and make her almost superhero like. Making the movie much more like the book keeps it authentic. 

The technology in the film tells us a lot about how times have changed, this explains why this film also cost more to make. 

In the 2013 version of Carrie synergy has also been used. Again they have created a soundtrack which features the popular band Vampire Weekend which the target audience will enjoy. Carrie figurines were also made to gain more money. 

The fact that the remake of Carrie did not make a huge profit shows that not all remakes work. This may be due to the fact that the storyline is a little old and that todays audience need fresh new ways to be scared as there are so many different types of horror genres out there already.