Total redo: Why does Hollywood have a morbid obsession with remakes?

With Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ opening this week and Guillermo Del Toro’s version of ‘Nightmare Alley’ out next month, Geoffrey Macnab looks at the trend for plundering back catalogues, but says revamping old hits rarely works

Bradley Cooper in Guillermo Del Toro’s remake of ‘Nightmare Alley’ (Spotlight Pictures)

When MGM decided to remake the British costume drama Gaslight in 1944, four years after the original, the Hollywood studio tried to destroy the negative and every existing copy of the original movie, thereby aiming to wipe it out of existence.

From today’s vantage point, such behaviour seems like extreme cultural vandalism. No one would ever suggest that the original, Oscar-winning 1961 screen adaptation of Broadway musical West Side Story should now be thrown on the scrap heap to make way for Steven Spielberg’s bravura interpretation, which is out in cinemas this week.

Nor is anyone looking to suppress the 1947 film noir Nightmare Alley simply because Guillermo Del Toro has made a new version, which reaches screens next month.