# Movie Trivia
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-trivia/136017
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [November 9, 2002, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-trivia/136017 "2002-11-09T12:37:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@bare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bare)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2002, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-trivia/136017/1 "2002-11-09T12:37:15Z")
What movie or movies have had the most versions produced?
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### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2002, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-trivia/136017/2 "2002-11-09T13:30:38Z")
Assuming you mean remakes, and assuming you don’t mean to include the nearly infinitely recursive remakes from India, **That’s Entertainment** (1974) wins out according to [this analysis](http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~saifono/InfoViz/assignment2.htm) done by Linda Harjono and Saifon Obromsook of UC Berkeley.
Using a dataset of 1,261 remade movies from 1909-1999, they found that the 1974 movie was remade in a chain of more than ten other movies.
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2002, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-trivia/136017/3 "2002-11-09T17:14:19Z")
I’m not quite certain what the original question means, but I’m GUESSING he’s asking “what story has been made into a movie the most times”?
I’m not certain, but I think Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo” would be good guesses. There have been scores of movies based on those stories, in many languages, as far back as the silent film era.
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2002, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-trivia/136017/4 "2002-11-09T17:22:49Z")
I’m not quite certain what the original question means, but I’m GUESSING he’s asking “what story has been made into a movie the most times”?
I’m not certain, but I think Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo” would be good guesses. There have been scores of movies based on those stories, in many languages, as far back as the silent film era.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2002, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-trivia/136017/5 "2002-11-09T19:00:47Z")
There have been about eight billion movies made about Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes (though not together, interestingly enough) as well as numerous biopics about Napoleon, and multiple film versions of Shakespeare plays, so how strict a definition of “remake” are we talking, here?
If by “remake” you mean movies with fictional subjects created in the 20th century (thus eliminating biopics and movies based on public-domain plays) with only trivial changes made for each version, I’d suggest _The Front Page_, about a newspaper reporter and his editor who are covering an impending execution. There have been several versions with this title, and a variant titled _His Girl Friday_ (the reporter’s gender changes from male to female) and a version set in a television station titled _Switching Channels_.
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### Author:  [@bare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bare)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2002, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-trivia/136017/6 "2002-11-09T19:43:14Z")
I’ll try and clarify my question. Forgive me, I’m not much of a movie buff, but the question came up in the waterin’ hole last night and I figured you folks would have the answer.
The discussion centered around re-makes of films, same story lines, different actors.
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### Author:  [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2002, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-trivia/136017/7 "2002-11-09T19:59:00Z")
I always thought it was “Alice in Wonderland” or “Alice Through the Looking Glass” or whatever incarnation you’d like.
I know I read that somewhere (as the story [or story idea] being produced the most times), but you know I’ll never find a cite.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2002, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-trivia/136017/8 "2002-11-09T22:02:22Z")
My handy-dandy copy of _Movie Facts and Feats (A Guinness Record Book)_ by Patrick Robertson cites _Cinderella_ as “The story which has been remade the most times”, with 58 productions between 1898 and 1980. Other often-filmed stories are Shakespeare plays, Dickens novels and other pre-1901 material.
I’d suggest the category of “remake” be limited to:
[ul][li]English-language films (no foreign or silent-era) [/li][li]20th-century original fiction (eliminating all material written before 1901, including fables and updated versions of Shakespeare, i.e. _West Side Story_)[/li][li]No movies based on real-life people or events.[/ul][/li]
Based on these criteria, I’d still go with _The Front Page_.