10 Bad Movie Remakes That Pissed Off A LOT of People

Today, I'm running through 10 movie remakes that seriously backfired. We've got Nicolas Cage screaming about bees, a shot-for-shot Psycho nobody wanted, and even a remake that lost $75 million right out of the gate.

Oldboy (2013)

Budget: $25.8 million

Box Office: $5 million

With Oldboy, the numbers say everything. Budget was over $25 million, and box office only 5 million. The original Korean film is a cult legend. Hollywood thought it could cash in, handed the project to Spike Lee, and brought in Josh Brolin as the lead. He plays Joe, a man locked up for twenty years, suddenly released, and set on a revenge path. But the American version lost everything that made the original hit so hard. The script was watered down, the edge was gone. And when the studio took Lee's cut and chopped a full hour. What was left just felt generic.

Spike Lee called it his worst filmmaking experience ever. "That is not the film Josh Brolin and I made. That didn't make it to the theaters." FilmDistrict didn't even try to save it. They barely spent on marketing, kept shifting the release date, and finally dropped it in about 500 theaters, straight into the teeth of Frozen's box office run. Opening weekend didn't even break a million dollars. Five million worldwide, and it was gone.

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

Budget: $90 million | Box Office: $63.5 million

Conan the Barbarian is another case where the numbers just get ugly. Warner Brothers started developing this reboot back in the early 2000s. They went through some pretty famous directors (the Wachowskis, Robert Rodriguez) before it finally ended up with Millennium Films and Marcus Nispel. Jason Momoa was cast as Conan, and physically, he worked. But the story didn't. The script was weak, dialogue was empty, and any chance for the practical effects vibe of the original was lost in cheap CGI.

Lionsgate dropped $25 million just for distribution, aiming to turn Conan into a franchise. But critics ripped it up. Opening weekend came in at $10 million, just half what Lionsgate wanted. By the end, Conan had brought in just over 63 million on a 90 million budget. They lost nearly 30 million on this thing. Momoa called it one of his best experiences filming, but said the final product was taken over and turned into "a big pile of shit."

Point Break (2015)

Budget: $105 million | Box Office: $133.7 million

The original Point Break worked because it had real stunts, Swayze and Keanu actually vibed, and it didn't try to be anything more than it was. The remake tho is pure generic. Warner Brothers spent $105 million on this thing and somehow turned a simple story about surfing bank robbers into a globe-hopping, eco-terrorist wingsuit circus. Every scene tries to be bigger: more X Games, less anything people care about. It ended up emptier in every possible way.

Warner Brothers tried to dodge competition by releasing the movie in China first, then moved the U.S. release to Christmas—right up against five other new wide releases. It did the worst out of all of them. The only places it even did "okay" were China and Russia. Final worldwide box office was $133.7 million, which looks decent until you realize the marketing budget made profit almost impossible.

After it flopped, the people behind it just admitted defeat. Producer Andrew Kosove said, "We learned a lot of lessons from Point Break. I never want to be involved in a remake again. We were pure of heart, but we offended a lot of people." You almost have to respect the honesty.

Red Dawn (2012)

Budget: $54 million | Box Office: $50.9 million

The original Red Dawn came out in 1984, back when Cold War paranoia actually made sense. The remake didn't have that, and it showed. MGM decided to update the story—this time, it's North Koreans invading Spokane, Washington. The villains were originally Chinese, but MGM digitally swapped them out in post-production, just to avoid offending the Chinese box office.

Production got stuck right in the middle of MGM's bankruptcy. Everything stalled. Chris Hemsworth shot this before Thor, but by the time Red Dawn actually released, even his star power couldn't save it. The movie opened at #7, buried under Twilight and Life of Pi, and never made back its $54 million budget. Critics didn't hold back: they called it boring, generic, silly. With no real Cold War threat, it looked pointless. MGM tried to cash in on an old title and just embarrassed themselves.

The Wicker Man (2006)

Budget: $40 million | Box Office: $38.8 million

The 1973 original was legendary in all the right ways: it was creepy, disturbing, British folk horror at its best. The Hollywood remake with Nicolas Cage is a completely different story. Cage plays a cop investigating a missing girl on an island full of pagan rituals and matriarchal cults. On paper, maybe that sounds like something. In reality, it's all awkward dialogue, clumsy scares, and Cage just going off the rails in every scene.

Even before the movie came out, the people behind the original (director Robin Hardy and Christopher Lee) were openly trashing the remake. They knew what was coming. What made the first Wicker Man so good just disappeared. All that's left is Cage screaming, and a $40 million movie that didn't even make its budget back.

Psycho (1998)

Budget: $25 million | Box Office: $37.1 million

Universal put real money behind remaking Hitchcock's Psycho—$25 million to redo every single shot, almost frame for frame, swapping black-and-white for color, and putting Vince Vaughn in the Norman Bates role. The studio must've realized right away that most people thought it was pointless, because they went hard on selling it to teenagers. Marketing blitzes on MTV, a push to make it a "big event" for anyone too young to care about the original. And it got results—sort of. Three out of four people who bought tickets were under 25. But even they hated it. The audience gave it a C- on CinemaScore, word spread fast, and the whole thing fizzled. At the end, it earned just $37 million worldwide, barely above budget—definitely not the win Universal wanted.

The Crow (2024)

Budget: $50 million | Box Office: $24.1 million

With The Crow, Hollywood spent nearly twenty years trying to find a reason to remake a film that was already a cult legend (mainly because of Brandon Lee and what happened during production). In twenty-twenty-four, after endless attempts, they finally got a new version in theaters. This one cost $50 million, had Bill Skarsgård as Eric Draven, and came from director Rupert Sanders. The release came and went. Box office didn't even hit half the budget—just 24 million worldwide.

There was never any genuine demand for this. The fan base didn't want it. Alex Proyas, who directed the 1994 film, called the remake a cash-grab and didn't bother to watch. Even Bill Skarsgård, who starred, admitted in interviews he wasn't behind the late script changes. They swapped out the ending just to set up a sequel, even though he didn't want it. I guess some movies should just stay in the past.

Ben-Hur (2016)

Budget: $100 million | Box Office: $94 million

In 2016, MGM went all-in on remaking Ben-Hur. This is the Charlton Heston epic, the one everybody's seen, even if it's just bits and pieces on cable. MGM had just landed a giant loan to revive their slate and clearly had money burning a hole in their pocket. So, they handed a Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (a guy best known for Wanted) a $100 million budget to try and bring biblical spectacle back to life.

Paramount joined in with a marketing barrage. Ads ran everywhere, especially during the Rio Olympics. They teamed up with religious organizations to hype it up. Producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, Hollywood's loudest evangelists, were on every interview promising the year's biggest movie.

But opening weekend didn't even clear $12 million. Even the most pessimistic projections were too high. Final box office was just 94 million. It couldn't even make its budget back, let alone the huge marketing spend. The whole thing disappeared faster than anyone expected.

Flatliners (2017)

Budget: $19 million | Box Office: $45.2 million

Sony's twenty-seventeen Flatliners reboot is a masterclass in misunderstanding the assignment. The original movie wasn't perfect, but it had real atmosphere, cool sci-fi ideas, and a stacked cast (Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland). The remake is completely generic. They kept the medical students and the near-death experiments, but stripped out everything that made the first one work. It was dead on arrival. Critics gave it 4% on Rotten Tomatoes—barely anyone liked it.

Nobody needed this movie, and the audience agreed. Why waste time on a bland copy when you can stream the original? On a budget of $19 million the movie made just over 45 million worldwide. It didn't lose money, but it didn't make enough for anyone to care. Just another forgettable remake, filed away and instantly forgotten.

The Hustle (2019)

Budget: $21 million | Box Office: $97.4 million

MGM tried to put a new spin on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in twenty-nineteen with The Hustle, flipping the genders but forgetting to bring any of the fun. Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson step in for Michael Caine and Steve Martin, working the same con-artist plot on the French Riviera. But where the original was smart, sharp, and genuinely funny, the remake was just lazy. Jokes landed flat, the chemistry wasn't there, and critics pounced.

Reviews called it out—13% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Empire Magazine going nuclear: "An embarrassment to the heist genre, an insult to all existing comedies, a disgrace to feminism." It made 97 million off a 21 million budget, so it looked like a win on paper. But nobody left the theater impressed. If anything, it proved that money alone doesn't buy style, and you can't fake what made the original a classic.