“Twin films” is the term used to describe a peculiar Hollywood phenomenon that just
about every year sees different major studios releasing movies with almost identical plots
and themes to their competitors current offerings.
Popular examples of twin films include Deep Impact and Armageddon, two films released
within weeks of one another that centred around saving the world from a giant meteor.
Other popular examples include A Bug’s Life and Antz – animated films about ants rebelling
against their hive.
Then there’s Dante’s Inferno and Volcano – both of which are disaster films about
volcanic eruptions.
(As an idea of how common this is in Hollywood, all of these films were released between 1997
and 1998.)
Or how about Chasing Liberty and First Daughter, two romantic comedies released in 2004 centered
around the idea of the romantic escapades of the President’s rebellious teenage daughter.
Sticking with the White House, we have the March 22, 2013 release of Olympus Has Fallen
followed by the shockingly similar June 8, 2013 film White House Down, which, to be fair,
are both mostly just “Die Hard in the White House”.
While it’s tempting to think this is something of a modern phenomenon deriving from the popular
meme that Hollywood has run out of ideas, in truth, twin films are as old as the film
industry itself.
So how do these come about?
It turns out there are a variety of things that may result in a twin film, with everything
from corporate espionage to pure coincidence coming into play.
For example, one of the most famous films of all time, Gone With the Wind, is also one
of the most noteworthy twin films in history.
In this case, famed actress Bette Davis failed to secure the role of Scarlett O’Hara in
MGM’s Gone With the Wind.
Looking to make their own Civil War film, Warner Brothers snapped up the rights to a
Broadway play called Jezebel, which, like Gone With the Wind, was all about a fiercely
independent southern woman during the Civil War.
They then cast Davis in the title role and slapped together a film as quickly as possible
in order to get it out before Gone With the Wind.
They were successful in this endeavor, with the film being a hit and Davis even winning
an Oscar for her role in the movie.
However, while Jezebel was well received, it was soon eclipsed by its twin film, Gone
With the Wind, which would set a record for the most Academy Awards and nominations, sell
around 25 million tickets from 1939-1940, and then be re-issued in 1941 and 1942 bringing
the total up to just shy of an astounding 60 million tickets sold.
This made it the highest grossing film ever made up to that point.
In fact, it is still generally considered such after adjusting for inflation.
(To be fair to recent films like Avatar that have come close to the mark when adjusting
for inflation, Gone With the Wind has been re-released many times over the years continuing
to pad the numbers; without those re-releases, it would no longer hold the top spot; so it’s
possible many decades from now a few of those other films might surpass it if they ultimately
show some semblance of staying power.
Although, I don’t think anyone’s holding their breath about the current #6, Furious
7, benefiting from a flurry of re-releases over the coming decades…)
In any event, other twin films alleged to have surfaced as a result of intentional corporate
shenanigans include the aforementioned Deep Impact and Armageddon, largely because the
latter film mysteriously went into production just weeks after Deep Impact was announced.
A lawsuit was threatened as a result, but ultimately nothing ever came of it.
Likewise, it’s long been rumored that the idea for the Dreamworks film Antz was stolen
from Disney by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the then CEO of the studio.
Prior to working for Dreamworks, Katzenberg had worked for Disney and it’s alleged that
when he jumped ship, he took an idea Disney had been working on about an animated film
about a non-conformist ant and made it his own.
Again, nothing ever came of the allegations and it’s still not clear which studio had
the idea first.
Another reason for twins films coming to be is just timing of some event or the like.
For example, this is the proposed explanation for why Hollywood decided to release two competing
movies chronicling the life of Christopher Columbus in 1992.
These movies, 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Christopher Columbus: The Discovery were both
advertised as celebrating the 500th anniversary of the “discovery” of America.
(See: The Truth About Christopher Columbus)
Twin films can also arise as a result of studios wanting to cover or delve into the same currently
en vogue topic at the time, but not necessarily having been inspired by the knowledge that
another studio was working on something similar.
(With the number of people working on movies, studios pretty much always know what other
studios are developing at any given moment, whether they widely announce a project or
not.)
Notable examples of this are the films The Truman Show and EDtv released in 1998 and
1999 respectively.
Both of these were made, as the British Film Institute puts it, as a direct result of an
attempt to: “tap into the fascination with the then-nascent reality television”.
Then you have studios simply noticing that a particular genre of film is popular at a
given time and attempting to cash in on the trend.
A great example is the year 1979 during which five different Dracula movies were released,
the most notable being Nosferatu the Vampyre and Dracula- both of which weren’t just
simple retellings of Bram Stoker’s original Gothic masterpiece, but adaptations of previous
adaptations of his work.
So the next time someone complains about the supposedly “new” notion of Hollywood running
out of ideas based on recent offerings seeming to be a slurry of remakes, just remind them
that at the end of the 1970s, studios released five Dracula movies in quick succession, two
of which were remakes of existing Dracula movies.
Remakes upon remakes has always been the order of the day going all the way back to silent
films, which were often just remakes of stage-shows, books, other silent films, etc.
A noteworthy early example of this is the 1939 Wizard of Oz staring Judy Garland.
While you might be aware that it is based on a book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published
in 1900, you probably aren’t aware that, beyond previous Broadway musical adaptations,
the 1939 Wizard of Oz was something of a remake of the 1925 film The Wizard of Oz.
Yes, it took Hollywood just 14 years to decide that modifying the story a bit and adding
a dash of new technology made making The Wizard of Oz again a great idea.
Originality has never been the name of the game in Hollywood- adapting existing works
of various sorts has always been more of the rule than the exception.
Modern cinema is no different in this respect.
Now, as you’d expect for an industry where ego and self-aggrandizement are celebrated,
even when studios learn that a rival is planning to release a movie with an almost identical
premise, they seldom back down to divert resources into more unique offerings, which is a key
reason so many of these films are released so close to one another.
A notable exception is the 1974 film The Towering Inferno.
The movie originally began life as two different projects optioned by Warner Bros and Twentieth
Century Fox respectively following the success of disaster movie, The Poseidon Adventure.
After being outbid by Warner Bros for the rights to a novel about a burning skyscraper
called The Tower, Fox attempted to steal their thunder by purchasing the rights to a book
with an almost identical premise called The Glass Inferno.
Both studios were set to make their own version of the film, each starring big named actors,
with Warner Bros pegging Paul Newman for the lead and Fox doing the same with Steve McQueen.
However, before production began, producer Irwin Allen convinced executives from both
studios that there was no scenario in which either studio would win if they decided to
compete with one another at the box office.
Instead, he proposed that they combine resources to make a single, super film about a giant
flaming building.
Not only would ceasing to compete on this one help revenue while reducing overall cost
for each studio, but they could even have both Newman and McQueen starring in it.
The two studios agreed and terms were quickly drawn up, with the historic union being formally
announced in a press release in October of 1973 that read:
It’s as though General Motors and Chrysler combined their respective brainpower and manpower
and went Dutch treat on the bill to produce a new model automobile.
As for the film’s title, an agreement was reached to combine the titles of the two novels
that served as inspiration for the film- so, The Tower and The Glass Inferno became The
Towering Inferno…
In the end, the film was a massive hit, grossing approximately ten times its production budget
and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, of which it won three.
Of course, although twin films are still just as popular today as they were decades ago-
seeing as in 2017 alone we’ve had competing biopics about both Winston Churchill (Churchill
and Darkest Hour) and Tommy Wiseau (The Disaster Artist and Best F(r)iends)- the current “in
thing” in Hollywood appears to be aping the idea of shared cinematic universes, in
a not so-subtle attempt to emulate the success of Marvel.
(But seemingly always choosing, unlike Marvel, to make cinematic universes darker and darker
as their stamp on their blow-em-up world ending sagas, rather than Marvel’s choice of keeping
things generally light-hearted, even in their films’ darkest moments- essentially never
taking themselves and their brand of world-ending plots too seriously.)
Examples of films launched recently that were intended to be a jumping off point for a shared
cinematic universe include King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) and The Mummy (2017),
both of which failed to meet box office expectations and resulted in plans for additional films
to be shelved.
(A temporary setback; they’ll surely try again and again.)
Meanwhile, a few years ago Hollywood was all about adapting books aimed at young adults
into potential epic series, examples including Divergent, The Maze Runner, Eragon, The Vampire’s
Assistant, Vampire Academy, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the Percy Jackson films- all of
which were an attempt to emulate the success of similar offerings like Harry Potter, The
Twilight Saga, and The Hunger Games films.
Looking to the future, it appears that twin films are very much going to remain a part
of the cinematic landscape with, for instance, there being at least half a dozen Robin Hood
films in development right now, including one that’s supposed to be the launch pad
for a new shared cinematic universe…
Just for fun, we can only hope that studio execs take a leaf out of Warner Bros and Fox’s
1974 playbook and decide to combine their resources to make a single, giant Robin Hood
movie starring every major actor in Hollywood- a feat Marvel seems to be presently striving
for anyway in their own little universe, which…
*lightbulb* Robin Hood as the backstory for Marvel’s Hawkeye in a first step to bring
all cinematic universes from every film ever made into
one single megaverse.
Just saying, I’d pay to see Inigo Montoya as a member of
the Avengers.