For as long as there have been successful movies, there have been copies, imitations, and rip-offs. Hollywood studios are hugely risk-averse–the sheer cost of making movies and the vulnerability of many studio executive jobs means that most would rather churn out something resembling a big hit than take the chance on an original concept.
In many cases, this means a sequel or reboot–but that’s only an option if you are the studio that owns the rights to the original film. For the others, it’s a matter of making movies that try to recapture whatever made the first one so popular, whether it’s the storyline, tone, visual style, or chemistry between the stars.
In the past decade, this has extended beyond imitating single movies to entire franchises. With movie series based on popular books such as Harry Potter and the Hunger Games proving so successful, studios have looked at whatever similarly themed novels could be adapted, in the hopes that they can find similar success.
Of course, it often doesn’t work. In trying to slavishly copy the formula of a hit movie, writers and directors often hugely underestimate audiences and fail to give their films any spark of originality. Harry Potter is not popular simply because it’s about a kid who learns magic. It’s the casting, the chemistry between the leads, and of course, the way in which JK Rowling’s world was so well translated to the screen–something that cannot simply be xeroxed (something even Rowling herself has attempted and failed to do with the Fantastic Beasts spin-offs).
So here are some of the most blatant attempts to imitate a popular or influential movie. Not all are terrible films and some were even financial successes. But all suffer from a misguided belief that simply copying another is to make something as beloved as the movies that are attempting to emulate.