20 Recent Movie Remakes NOBODY Asked For
These remakes happened in spite of audiences.
To many, remakes are symptomatic of the thunderous lack of imagination in Hollywood, where studios would rather reheat their past successes to typically diminished returns than roll the dice on something totally new.
But it's certainly unfair to say that all remakes are inherently bad - many manage to offer a fun or interesting remix of what came before, or perhaps even improve upon a decent-but-flawed original.
Yet regardless of their actual quality, in terms of recent remakes these are the ones that just about nobody out there was asking for.
These remakes were all of movies that simply didn't "need" to be remade - as if any film does - by the estimation of most.
Perhaps the original holds up incredibly well, or is just so specific that a remake would seemingly struggle to capture the same charm.
Hell, maybe the original is categorically niche and low-key enough that it's a genuine surprise anyone would want to remake it at all.
But for whatever reason, these remakes all happened.
Some turned out better than expected, others less so, but each came out in spite of the patent lack of audience demand for them...
20. War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds is a story that's basically been told to death across media, and frankly Steven Spielberg did a fine enough job adapting H. G. Wells' classic sci-fi story in 2005 that there was little interest in seeing it done again.
Yet this 2025 take does get a small sliver of credit for trying something different - eschewing the expected big-budget blockbuster format, the new War of the Worlds is instead a low-budget screenlife film unfolding entirely over phone and computer screens.
An interesting idea, albeit one whose execution is woeful from top to bottom - it's visually hideous, the writing is atrocious, it's jam-packed with embarrassing Amazon product placement, and Ice Cube's clueless central performance is only good for some unintentional chuckles.
The concept had potential even though nobody was asking for it, but the utterly slapdash, tossed-off manner in which this film was both produced and released - including a five-year stint in post-production limbo - really says it all.