According to a three-month old update (http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2010/09/10/development-update-frida y-september-10-37362/8873/) John Glenn ("Treadstone") is going to produce a U.S. remake of this for ABC (2011, 2012).
I think I'll never understand this. Why don't they just air the original? It's in the same language, isn't it?
Money, pure and simple. For the same reason they make movies based on TV shows. They are always looking for other sources, whether written or foreign, they can turn into a big hit movie or tv show.
They remake old TV shows and old movies, too, for the same reason. We recently had remakes of the old US shows Knight Rider, The Bionic Woman and of course Battlestar Galactica. This fall they will have remakes of Charlie's Angels and Wonder Woman.
ABC wants to make money off "Identity", so they make their own version. Besides, most people in the US don't watch BBC America or buy British DVD's.
"All in the Family" was a huge hit here and made them lots of money, even though it was based on a UK tv show. Same with "American Idol".
Also, easier to buy someone else's ideas than come up with your own...
Suzanne Lanoue
http://tvmegasite.net
Makes sense I guess. I understand it a bit more if they're remakes of older shows that bring something of their own to the table, or remakes who otherwise do their own thing. For all I know this could even be the case for Identity. I even understand when in some cases, UK shows would feel too "provincial" for a mainstream US audience. But Identity was so much like a typical US crime show the concept doesn't seem to make much sense. Sometimes (Germans do that too), creators actually just re-shoot the original scripts by the letter, and I wonder whether they actually hope to make more money with a production of their own that they'll first have to amortise, rather than just license the original.
The same goes for music I guess. Cover versions and remixes are great, but only if the people behind them have some creative talent, as opposed to those cover versions that just desperately try to sound as much like the original as possible...
this is kind of similiar to White Collar,
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