...a perfectly good german movie gets remade by hollywood.
The original is called "Barfuss", a really heart warming an funny movie with Til Schweiger and Mrs. Wokalek.
Let's see how that works out. The last Hollywood Remake of a GOOD German movie I can think of ist "The Experiment" and let's be honest it sucked big time.
I found the movie touching. Evan/Scott worked great together. I realize U.S. remakes are not popular and I understand. But I think people have been quick to trash this one on the remake basis, although that's a bit more complicated. It is a little unfortunate for the original screenwriter, but at least there are two great versions of his story, imo.
Interview with Steve Zotnowski who originally wrote the screenplay..
http://www.filmthreat.com/interviews/75157/
He had no idea it had been made into a foreign film.
“Somehow this foreign filmmaker got the script from [the bankrupt production company]. He purchased it from them without me knowing. So he made it and it was a huge hit, but I had no idea. I was in the Writers Guild, and that began a process. We had to sue. It took about three years to settle, and we settled in 2008.
“The Guild has told me that to their knowledge, this has never happened before in the history of movies. Normally it’s the other way around: It gets made elsewhere and someone in the US buys the rights to remake it here.”
“I asked my lawyer if we could buy the rights back to get it remade in English, and [the foreign filmmakers] were thrilled with that. I think that they figured it would never get made anyway.”
Comparing his script to the first European version, Zotnowski observes: “The other version is completely the same movie, and yet it’s completely different. I love the film. The music, the cinematography, it’s all fantastic. They changed tons of stuff and yet changed nothing. It’s so bizarre. It’s my movie, but some of the dialogue is exactly on the nose and a lot of it is different. The beats are there in the story, but they had to change some things because of the geography in Europe – scenes on a plane became scenes on a train, for example.”
This movie is good, the German movie is better
i didn't expect the German movie to be that funny, not LOL but was funny
even though i watched the American first, i still prefer the German.
It is never about what happened, it is only how you look at it!
Yeah the German movie is better. Scott on the other hand is better thaν Til so...
A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.
And the German "original" was an adaptation of a BOOK. Get over it dude.
It's so simple a six year old could figure it out.
Quick! Someone get a six year old!
Actually Til Schweiger found his screenplay in America and tried originally to make it there - when he still had ambitions to break into Hollywood. He then bought the rights to shoot it in Germany. So this is actually a remake from the original script.
sharehttps://www.newsreview.com/chico/one-script-two-movies/content?oid=12900333
Here's an article about it. The author sold the screenplay years ago but the company he sold it to went bankrupt and sold their assets, including the screenplay, which ended up in the hands of a German company eventually. They made into a movie in 2005 and the author didn't even know about it until he was overseas and someone mentioned they saw a German movie they liked with the same title and he realized it was based on his screenplay. He then leased the rights to the movie back and found a company to make it into an American movie, a process that took years. He likes both versions of the movie, but was actually a little bit involved with the American one, whereas no involvement whatsoever with the German one, although he said the German one was more like the original screenplay.
...a perfectly good german movie gets remade by hollywood.
The original is called "Barfuss", a really heart warming an funny movie with Til Schweiger and Mrs. Wokalek.