Self-Remake

When The Remake of a work comes out, it is usually done by a new director. However, sometimes the original director is tasked with making the remake of a previous work of theirs.

Sometimes it's because the director wasn't happy with the original work or they want to explore more from it. Other times — in the case of the Foreign Remake — studios believe the original director would be best for the job. Regardless, the results vary.

Compare George Lucas Altered Version (where the creator re-edits the original work), Updated Re Release (where new content is added to the original video game), Adaptation Expansion (where the creator fleshing out their short-length material to larger length - be it from their own short film or short story), and Self-Adaptation (where the author adapts their work for a different medium). Music examples often overlap with Rearrange the Song but with an entire album's worth of music rather than just the one song.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Hideaki Anno made both Neon Genesis Evangelion and its remake/reimagining Rebuild of Evangelion.
• Osamu Tezuka wrote both Princess Knight and its two remakes. The first remake, which ran in Nakayoshi, is the most widely released version of the manga.

Eastern European Animation

• In the Soviet Union, the Brumberg sisters made a black-and-white animated Puss in Boots adaptation in 1938, and a colored remake thirty years later.
• The Post, based on a poem by Samuil Marshak, was made by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky twice: in 1929 as a black-and-white movie and in 1964 in color (the latter in collaboration with his wife Vera Tsekhanovskaya).

Films — Animated

• Shane Acker directed the short film 9 (2005), and its remake 9 (2009).
• In 1984, Tim Burton made the live-action short film Frankenweenie. In 2012, he remade it into a feature-length stop-motion animated movie.

Films — Live Action

• 13 Tzameti and its American remake 13 were both made by Géla Babluani.
• Roger Vadim directed 1956's And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot, then its 1988 remake starring Rebecca De Mornay.
• Luc Besson wrote and produced Taxi and its sequels then produced an American remake in 2004.
• Ole Bornedal made both Nightwatch and its 1997 American remake.
• Frank Capra made Lady for a Day and its 1961 remake Pocketful of Miracles.
• Damien Chazelle made a short film called Whiplash in 2013, and a year later expanded it into the feature film Whiplash.
• Roger Corman remade some of his own movies:
  • He directed The Wasp Woman in 1960 and produced the 1995 remake.
  • He produced Death Race 2000, its remake, Death Race and all of its prequels.
  • He was an executive producer for the original 1980 Humanoids from The Deep and produced its 1996 remake.
  • He directed A Bucket of Blood and produced its 1995 remake.
  • He produced Forbidden World and its Dead Space remake.
• Jim Cummings (Filmmaker) wrote and directed a 2016 short film called Thunder Road, and in 2018 directed a feature version with the same name.
• Boaz Davidson remade his 1978 movie Lemon Popsicle in America four years later as The Last American Virgin.
• Cecil B. DeMille
  • He directed 1956's The Ten Commandments, which was a remake of his own 1923 silent film.
  • He also made The Squaw Man three different times, twice as a silent and once as an early talkie.
• French writer José Giovanni was not satisfied with Un nommé La Rocca, which he wrote. He directed its remake, La Scoumoune. Both films starred Jean-Paul Belmondo in the main role.
• Austrian film director Michael Haneke made Funny Games and only 10 years later, he made its Hollywood remake.
• Howard Hawks
  • He remade Rio Bravo twice with El Dorado in 1966 and Rio Lobo in 1970, all of them starring John Wayne.
  • Hawks also made Ball of Fire and its musical remake A Song Is Born seven years later.
• In 1934 Alfred Hitchcock directed The Man Who Knew Too Much and then a remake in 1956. Hitchcock himself described the original as "the work of a talented amateur" and the remake as "made by a professional", in response to François Truffaut describing the remake as far superior.
• Director Kon Ichikawa made his mystery film The Inugami Family in 1976 and reshot it with the same lead actor in 2006.
• The Housemaid is a 1960 film by Kim Ki-young that was later remade again by him in 1971 and 1982.
• Sebastián Lelio made Gloria and its English language remake Gloria Bell.
• George Lucas remade his short film Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB as the feature film THX 1138.
• Eighteen years after making De Lift, Dick Maas remade it as Down.
• Michael Mann revisited his script for the made-for-TV movie L.A. Takedown and made Heat six years later.
• In 2006, Rizal Mantovani released a film called Kuntilanak. He released another movie with the same name in 2018.
• Leo McCarey made Love Affair and its 1957 remake An Affair to Remember.
• The House Behind The Cedars was a 1927 silent film about a black man who passes as white and persuades his sister to do the same. It was highly controversial at the time and had to be censored in many areas. The film is considered a lost film, with no known copies existing. However, its 1932 remake Veiled Aristocrats has survived. Both films were directed by Oscar Micheaux.
• Hans Petter Moland directed the 2014 Norwegian Black Comedy crime revenge film In Order of Disappearance and its 2019 American remake Cold Pursuit.
• Hideo Nakata, director of Ringu and Ringu 2, also directed The Ring Two, the sequel to the American remake.
• 1959's Floating Weeds is a remake of Yasujiro Ozu's silent 1934 film A Story of Floating Weeds. Ozu made Floating Weeds to take advantage of the advancements in filmmaking, such as sound and color cinematography.
• Bangkok Dangerous: The Thai version and the Nicolas Cage starring version are both directed by the Pang Brothers.
• Jean-Marie Poiré made both Les Visiteurs and its remake Just Visiting with the same two main actors, Jean Reno and Christian Clavier.
• Evil Dead: Sam Raimi was originally going to make a straightforward sequel to his previous film The Evil Dead (1981). However, due to rights issues, Raimi turned the first act of Evil Dead 2 into a shortened remake of the first film.
• Ken Scott's Delivery Man is a remake of Scott's earlier movie Starbuck.
• Takashi Shimizu directed both the original Ju-on and its American remake The Grudge.
• The Vanishing and its 1993 American remake were both made by George Sluizer.
• Producer example: Robin Swicord, the screenwriter and co-producer of the 1994 film version of Little Women, also co-produced Little Women (2019), written and directed by Greta Gerwig.
• The Loft is a 2014 erotic thriller film directed by Erik Van Looy. It is a remake of the 2008 Dutch-language Belgian film Loft, which Van Looy also directed.
• Three Fugitives was adapted to American audiences by Francis Veber from his earlier film Les Fugitifs.
• In 2005, Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement directed a short film called What We Do in the Shadows: Interviews with Some Vampires. In 2014, they directed its feature film remake What We Do in the Shadows.
• Eight years after making High Sierra, Raoul Walsh re-made it as the western Colorado Territory.
• These Three was a 1936 adaptation of the play The Children's Hour. It's a very loose adaptation that changes the plot from Karen and Martha being Mistaken for Gay to Martha being mistaken for sleeping with Karen's boyfriend. In 1961, William Wyler, the director of These Three, directed a Truer to the Text adaptation that kept the lesbian plot intact, albeit still with some mild censorship.

Live-Action TV

• The 2022 miniseries Irma Vep — written and directed by Olivier Assayas — is a remake of Assayas' 1996 film.
• Chris Chibnall directed Broadchurch and the American remake Gracepoint.
• John Woo remade his film Once a Thief into a short-lived TV series.
• The 1970s sitcom The Squirrels and its 1990s remake Fiddler's Three were both written by Eric Chappell.

Music

• Blue Öyster Cult released their Cult Classics LP, which consisted of nothing but re-recordings of their best and most iconic tracks performed by the band's then-current lineup. Engagingly, the CD adds several sound-only versions intended to be used for karaoke performances of things like "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "Burnin' For You".
• David Bowie:
  • The 2020 archival EP Is It Any Wonder? centers mostly around re-recordings of various tracks in Bowie's back-catalog, from as old as 1970 to as late as 1991. The re-recordings were originally made for Earthling but ended up scrapped when Bowie shifted that album to focus on original material.
  • The 2021 posthumous album Toy (recorded in 2000 and shelved for over two decades) centers primarily around re-recordings of various early/obscure tracks, mostly non-album cuts from before his mainstream breakthrough in 1972. The original Toy sessions had been put aside when Bowie decided to make Heathen.
• Buckner & Garcia:
  • When Pac-Man Fever was re-released on CD in 1999, the duo was not allowed to access their original recordings from 1982, and Sony Music refused to release the original album on CD. Therefore, the band had to redo all of the songs with modern sound-alike recordings.
  • For the movie Pixels, Jerry Buckner, vocalist Danny Jones, and Jace Hall used the vocals from the late Gary Garcia's master recording to record a new version of the Title Track to Pac-Man Fever, "Pac-Man Fever Eat Em' Up".
• Kate Bush: Her 2011 album Director's Cut focuses on re-recorded versions of various songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, focusing on addressing issues she had with the originals.
• Car Seat Headrest: In 2018, the band re-recorded their 2011 album Twin Fantasy as Twin Fantasy (Face to Face), adjusting the material to reflect how things had changed for frontman Will Toledo in the intervening seven years. The album was bundled with a copy of the 2011 rendition, retroactively subtitled (Mirror to Mirror).
• Ska band Catch 22 released the album Keasbey Nights in 1998. When Tomas Kalnoky (the singer, guitarist, and songwriter on that first album) formed Streetlight Manifesto, their second album was a completely re-recorded version of Keasbey Nights, released in 2006.
• Def Leppard: Thanks to a rights dispute with Universal Music Group, the band re-recorded many of their biggest hits for release on digital download and streaming services, jokingly billing these new versions as "forgeries."
• Peter Gabriel: 2011's New Blood centers around orchestral re-recordings of various songs from Gabriel's past career, acting as a companion piece to his 2010 Cover Album Scratch My Back.
• Gamma Ray has Blast from the Past, a two-CD album of versions. The first CD is composed of re-arrangings of Ralf Scheepers' era-songs with their then-current (and eventually long-lasting) lineup of Kai Hansen-Henjo Richter-Dirk Schlachter-Dan Zimmerman.
• Steve Hackett: The Genesis Revisited series of albums revolves around re-recorded songs from Hackett's tenure in Genesis, with most of the songs featured being ones that he either wrote or co-wrote. Genesis Revisited II additionally tosses in re-recordings of songs from his solo career.
• Helloween launched a special compilation for their 20th. anniversary called Unarmed, composed of non-Power Metal rearrangements of songs from their entire catalog by the band itself.
• Haruomi Hosono: Following on from former Yellow Magic Orchestra bandmate Yukihiro Takahashi's 2018 re-recording of Saravah!, Hosono re-recorded his debut album, Hosono House, in 2019 as Hochono House, reversing the running order.
• Happens with some Japanese Music and Visual Kei bands:
  • Being more known for their second album Image, Luna Sea remade completely his first album Luna Sea in 2011 as part of the 20th anniversary of the album (originally made in 1991).
  • A common practice of B'z who usually remake some exclusive tracks for soundtracks (mostly from anime and video games) in their albums as bonus tracks. And since their first Greatest Hits Album double album, also they remade some of his past hits into new albums or even remade them in English (as "Into Free -Dangan-" for Dragon's Dogma OST).
  • Psycho le Cému also has the habit of remaking some of their songs from time to time in some of their albums and EPs. For their comeback in 2014, the band remade various of their hits as part of their new 2016 album NOW AND THEN ~THE WORLD~.
• Jean-Michel Jarre: For the 30th anniversary of his album Oxygène, Jarre not only re-recorded the entire album as Oxygène: New Master Recording, but also performed the album off-scratch live for the accompanying Concert Film Live in Your Living Room, which was followed by a tour where the entire album was essentially remade live each performance.
• Natalie Merchant, former frontwoman of 10,000 Maniacs, re-recorded her debut solo album, Tigerlily, in 2015 to commemorate the album's 20th anniversary. The new version, Paradise Is There: The New Tigerlily Recordings, additionally features a revised running order, featuring all 11 songs from the 1995 album but altering the sequencing of them.
• Mike Oldfield: To commemorate the 30th anniversary of his debut album Tubular Bells, Oldfield re-recorded the entire album from scratch as Tubular Bells 2003, making use of new recording technologies that had emerged in the intervening three decades to address longstanding issues he had with the 1973 rendition.
• Sting: Both Symphonicities and My Songs center around re-recordings of both his solo songs and ones he did as part of The Police. The former album features orchestral renditions to match his then-ongoing Classical Music phase, while the latter focuses on modernizing the songs to connect with newer audiences.
• Taylor Swift: Thanks to a rights dispute regarding ownership of her first six albums, Swift re-recorded each of them from the ground up, with these new versions being given the subtitle (Taylor's Version).
• Yukihiro Takahashi: In 2018, Takahashi re-recorded his debut album, Saravah!, as SARAVAH! SARAVAH! to commemorate its 40th anniversary.
• Roger Waters: The Dark Side of the Moon Redux is a re-recording of The Dark Side of the Moon, which Waters wrote the lyrics for. Among other things, the remake omits the guitar solos from the original album as a byproduct of renewed tensions between Waters and former Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour, instead replacing them with spoken-word passages. According to Waters, the decision to redo the album 50 years later was born out of a desire to make its intended messaging more overt, feeling that it attracted a Misaimed Fandom over the years as a result of its success.

Video Games

• Keiji Inafune oversaw both the original Mega Man X game and its remake Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X.
• Shinji Mikami directed the original Resident Evil on the PlayStation 1 and the REmake for the GameCube.
• Multiple members of the original Final Fantasy VII team were involved in the remake, including Yoshinori Kitase, Tetsuya Nomura, and Kazushige Nojima.
• The Legend of Tian-ding is a remake of a 2004 flash game with the same name. Both games are developed by the same guy, Taiwanese programmer Maso Lin - in fact, the 2004 game is Lin's "graduation exam".

Webcomics

• Anthronauts: After the author realized she was torturing her main characters too much in the original run, she ended it in 2013. Then rebooted the comic in 2016 with a somewhat lighter tone.
• Badly Drawn Kitties: Author Mat Sherer has rebooted the comic multiple times, initially to remove Jay Naylor's characters from the comic but later on account of lapsing schedules.
• Campus Safari went on hiatus in 2008 so the author could focus on other series in The Cyantian Chronicles setting. In the process of writing these other series, details about the setting and chronology changed and in 2012, Campus Safari was rebooted.
• Fan Dan Go started in 2009 but was relaunched ten years later as Errant. Both comics are drawn by Kate Holden (AKA Darth Mongoose).
• Furthia High got a reboot in 2007.

Western Animation

• Looney Tunes: In 1944, Bob Clampett remade two of his black-and-white shorts, Porky's Badtime Story and Injun Trouble, in color as Tick-Tock Tuckered and Wagon Heels, respectively.

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