The 29 most remade movies of all time

Remakes appear to be all the rage as A Star Is Born racks up award nominations

A Star is Born
Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in A Star is Born
(Image credit: Outnow.ch)

Hollywood has a long tradition of recycling its greatest hits but with the third retelling of A Star is Born grabbing multiple nominations this awards season, it feels like movie remakes are more prevalent than ever.

But a new study by the gadget reselling site musicMagpie shows that many of the most frequently remade films haven’t been reworked over the past decade.

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The research, using more than 100 years’ worth of data, found that the most remade movie of the past century is Scrooge, the Christmas film based on Charles Dickens’s famous classic A Christmas Carol. Turned into a film in 1935, the story has since been retold six times. The most recent version, starring Jim Carrey, was released in 2009.

According to the study, thirteen films take joint second place with five remakes. These include the 1914 hit Brewster’s Millions (last remade in 1985) and the Bollywood thriller Don, which was first released in 1978 and most recently remade in 2009.

The research also found that the movie with the longest gap between remakes is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The original film was released in 1920 and the remake came out decades later in 2005 – a gap of 85 years.

Here are the 29 most remade films in history:

  1. Scrooge: 7
  2. Brewster’s Millions: 5
  3. Don: 5
  4. Great Expectations: 5
  5. Huckleberry Finn: 5
  6. Jane Eyre: 5
  7. Jungle Book: 5
  8. Oliver Twist: 5
  9. Robin Hood: 5
  10. The Hunchback of Notre Dame: 5
  11. The Three Godfathers: 5
  12. The Three Musketeers: 5
  13. Tom Sawyer: 5
  14. Treasure Island: 5
  15. Dracula: 4
  16. Frankenstein: 4
  17. Gulliver's Travels: 4
  18. Kidnapped: 4
  19. King Solomon's Mines: 4
  20. Les Miserables: 4
  21. Manichitrathazhu: 4
  22. Naadodigal: 4
  23. Nueve reinas: 4
  24. The Great Gatsby: 4
  25. The Hound of the Baskervilles: 4
  26. The Iron Mask: 4
  27. The Lodger: 4
  28. The Phantom of the Opera: 4
  29. The Sea Beast: 4
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