40 Movies That Are Eerily Similar To Earlier Films – And Fans Probably Won't Be Impressed

After King Kong became popular beyond its studio’s wildest dreams, other filmmakers tried to – sorry – ape its success. Probably the most well-known attempt is the 1949 film Mighty Joe Young, which had a less angry but still impressive gorilla as its star. You may remember that it actually got remade with better technology – but then so did King Kong.

Surely I, Robot and Who Framed Roger Rabbit have nothing in common? One’s a sci-fi flick about robots, and the other’s a wacky fantasy about cartoons. But it’s been pointed out that they have very similar plots. In both, a grizzled detective who dislikes non-humans must buddy up with one of them. Then they uncover a conspiracy devised by an evil non-human to make the others look bad. Who knew?!

There were a few groans about the 1998 remake of Godzilla. There was the claim, for instance, that it had just borrowed its storyline from 1953’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Which begs the question: why didn’t the filmmakers drop the “Godzilla” name altogether and do a straight-up remake of that movie instead?

These films are so similar when you stop and think about them. Both are about a man born with an unusual condition who’s in love with his childhood friend and lives through some famous moments in history. But maybe that’s not even a coincidence, as both screenplays were penned by the same guy, Eric Roth. 

Superhero movies will inevitably share some plot beats. But to many, Man of Steel seemed to copy Batman Begins rather too closely – almost as if the filmmakers already knew a winning formula existed. Even the respective supervillains have similar plans. We all know, though, that Batman Begins is the far better film. 

Toy Story is one of the most beloved children’s films of all time, so you can see why people might be tempted to borrow its premise. And that looks to be what The Secret Life of Pets did. In that film, it’s pets, obviously, rather than toys who have a hidden society away from their owners. There’s even a rivals-turned-friends arc and a plot about having to find the way home.

This was a case so serious it actually went to court. The trust managing the estate of Cornell Woolrich, whose story forms the basis of Rear Window, filed a lawsuit after Disturbia came out. And it’s not hard to see why, as both films are about an isolated man convinced his neighbor is a murderer. But the judge threw the suit out in 2010, ruling, “The main plots are similar only at a high, unprotectable level of generality.”

Ever heard of the movie King Frat? No? That’s probably because it’s widely considered to be a cheap rip-off of Animal House with only a fraction of its funniness. Even the soundtrack sounds similar. And it’s so gross and full of offensive humor that it’s now in the trash can of movie history.

When Days of Thunder first came out, The Washington Post wrote “If Top Gun was a stylish bimbo of a movie, all cleavage, white teeth, and aerodynamic flash, then Days of Thunder is its paradoxical twin – a bimbo with brains.” And the movies are cut from the same cloth: they’re both about a Tom Cruise character with daddy issues who learns to calm down when driving a cool machine.

No one involved in the making of Assault on Precinct 13 was coy about its inspiration. Essentially, it’s said to be a loose remake of Rio Bravo. While the films are different genres, their plots are basically the same. John Carpenter even went under the name “John T. Chance,” a character from Rio Bravo, in the movie’s credits.

If you mix up White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen, don’t worry. Almost everyone does. They’re both silly blockbusters about an action hero protecting the president when the White House is attacked, and they both came out in 2013. Yet while Olympus Has Fallen spawned some sequels, its Jamie Foxx-starring counterpart hasn’t so far.

One YouTuber put together a whole video to demonstrate what Transformers borrows from Gremlins. And it appears to be quite a lot – even the main character getting what turns out to be an alien when all he wanted was a car. Oh, and there’s another link. Frank Welker played both Stripe in Gremlins and Megatron in some of the original Transformers cartoons.

When Disney first revealed plans for Coco, animation fans immediately pointed out that it sounded very similar to 20th Century Fox’s The Book of Life. Of course, there can and should be more than one Day of the Dead movie out there, but Disney’s attempt to trademark the holiday pre-Coco’s release endeared it to nobody.

Rob Zombie still sings the praises of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In 2017 he told Rolling Stone, “The look was hot, dirty and nasty, yet completely stunning. The sets, wardrobe, and props were 100 percent perfect.” Zombie’s own House of 1000 Corpses came under fire for being a rip-off of the earlier movie, but it was likely more of a tribute.

Chasing Liberty and First Daughter came out in the same year and have the exact same plot. That can’t be a coincidence, surely? Both are about the young, rebellious teenage daughter of the president who falls for a cute young man – only for him to turn out to be an undercover agent secretly assigned to her. Oh, and both were big critical flops.

Is Minority Report just The Fugitive with a sci-fi twist? Some think so. Both feature a man framed for something he didn’t do, but then there are the little details that seem to have been borrowed, too… Both main characters are recognized on a subway, for instance, and both have confrontations at a party. Hmmm.

After the success of Gremlins, there was a lot of floundering around from Hollywood as it tried to find the next cute/scary little critter to market. One of the many bad results of this was Hobgoblins – a movie so awful that it ended up being featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Without that, it probably wouldn’t be remembered at all.

There’s no doubt about it: these two animated movies – released within months of each other – are pretty alike. Both feature the presence of something called a Minion, and both are about a supervillain who attempts to reform his wicked ways. But animation fans were lucky that year, as the two flicks were both pretty good.

Nothing can touch Terminator 2: Judgment Day when it comes to time-travel assassins from the future. Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie Looper tried very hard – it even has a character whose name is a variant of “Sarah.” But you simply can’t beat one of the most famous sci-fi movies of all time.

It would have been hard for Justice League to not be just like The Avengers. After Zack Snyder left the project, Joss Whedon was brought on board, and he was the one behind the previous superheroes-coming-together-against-a-threat hit. The recycled jokes were simply too much for some fans, though, and the eventual Snyder cut of Justice League has since been gaining traction.

The AV Club noted in 2017, “The Fast And The Furious was practically a beat-for-beat remake of Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow’s near-perfect 1991 surfing-bank-robber movie.” And it’s hard to argue with that. Screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson even acknowledged in a 2016 interview with Complex, “We sort of do what they did in Point Break.”

Everyone’s heard of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but what about the lesser-known but very similar film that came out one year before? It was called Phantom of the Paradise, and back in the 1970s it was even on the same bill as Rocky Horror. Yet while one movie became a massive cult hit, the other one faded into obscurity for some reason.

Back in 2004, professional movie reviewers were quick to point out that 13 Going on 30 sounded a lot like Big. Both, after all, focused on kids who magically became adults overnight and had to somehow deal with that. And yet both films are pretty well-liked, with some even preferring 13 Going on 30 to its predecessor.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water... Piranha is very openly a rip-off of Jaws – but thanks to Steven Spielberg, it wasn’t a disastrous one. It even helped kickstart director Joe Dante’s career. Universal were all ready to sue, especially as Jaws 2 was about to come out at the time of Piranha’s release. Spielberg stepped in, however, and convinced the studio not to.

After Die Hard came out and made Bruce Willis a big name, seemingly every action star in the world wanted a blockbuster of their own. Jean-Claude Van Damme tried with 1995’s Sudden Death, where he played – wait for it – a recently divorced man who fights his way through the baddies while quipping at every opportunity.

Right after The Truman Show came out, EDtv followed in its footsteps. Like its predecessor, it was all about a man trapped in the crazy world of reality television. But EDtv did at least change up the idea by having its main character be a willing participant instead of an unwitting victim. In the end, it was The Truman Show that went on to become a classic.

Repo Men was released in a cloud of controversy, as it bore a strong resemblance to lesser-known but well-liked musical Repo! The Genetic Opera. This really did seem like a case of two creative teams coming up with the same idea independently, but sadly fans of the older flick were happy to wage war against the newcomer.

After a spate of no period drama stage magician movies at all, suddenly two came along in the same year! And within months of each other, to boot. The Prestige and The Illusionist are not actually all that similar when it comes to plot and characters. But maybe some magic was involved to make two different studios come up with the same idea at the same time?

When Lockout was released, critics slammed it as a rip-off of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York. And it turned out a French court agreed with them. In 2016 Lockout director Luc Besson was ordered to pay $500,000 to the creators of the 1981 movie after judges found his flick “massively borrowed key elements.”

Some fans consider Friday the 13th Part VII: New Blood to be basically Jason vs Carrie, which would certainly have made for a less clunky title. The film’s female lead, Tina, is a young blonde wallflower with out-of-control telekinetic abilities… sound like anyone else we know? But it’s fine. No one sued or threw a bucket of blood.

There’s a story behind how two insect-related computer animations dropped at almost the same time. Allegedly, Jeffrey Katzenberg – ex-Disney head and a founder of DreamWorks – kind of stole the idea from Pixar after discovering it wanted to make an ant-themed movie. John Lasseter, the head of Pixar, slammed Antz in the press, and a bitter rivalry between Pixar and DreamWorks sprung up. Maybe they shouldn’t have let the whole thing bug them.

Horror film A Quiet Place was a huge hit – but then Netflix dropped a movie that looked suspiciously similar. This one was called The Silence, and it had an almost identical plot to the other movie. To be fair, it was based on a book that came out before A Quiet Place. You should know, though, that the rights were only bought by Netflix after that movie made tons of money.

The beloved E.T. ushered in a new age of friendly space alien movies. Yet a lot of them were missing what made E.T. great. The worst offender is the 1988 film Mac and Me, which was not only a clear rip-off of the story but also doubled as a long, tedious advertisement for McDonald’s.

A tale of corporate espionage forms the backstory of the Deep Impact vs Armageddon summer. Michael Bay and co allegedly outright stole from Paramount to create their own space-object-threatens-Earth movie. If true, their tactics helped them win. Armageddon made the most money and even got its own theme park ride.

Folks noticed right away that Leighton Meester movie The Roommate ripped off Single White Female. It had the exact same storyline: woman becomes friends with her housemate only to discover she’s unhinged. But The Roommate was not as successful as its inspiration, to say the least. Currently, it has only a 3 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

People have drawn comparisons between the first Hunger Games movie and the Japanese film Battle Royale. Suzanne Collins, the author of the original book, claimed she hadn’t seen Battle Royale before writing, and eventually her editor advised her not to watch it at all. But is this an issue really worth fighting about – especially considering the message of both films?

It was another case of “twin films” in 2011 when No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits were released. As you can probably guess from the titles, both were about a best-friends relationship that turns into a sexual one. There’s an extra connection, though: the female lead of Friends with Benefits, Mila Kunis, eventually married Ashton Kutcher from the competing film!

Star Wars may have changed the face of Western cinema, but it definitely took its cues from earlier movies. George Lucas has outright said that the Akira Kurosawa film The Hidden Fortress inspired many elements of the Star Wars universe, including ones that appeared in the later films of the franchise. Princesses, peasants, slave-owners… they’re all in there.

Michael Bay’s clone flick The Island came under fire for being, uh, a clone of an earlier film. The producers of the obscure movie Parts: The Clonus Horror actually filed a lawsuit against DreamWorks and Warner Bros. for copyright infringement, but that ended up being settled out of court. It didn’t do The Island’s reputation much good, either.

James Cameron has actually admitted that Avatar has some similarities to the classic Dances With Wolves. Asked about it back in 2009, he acknowledged that the two shared some plot points. The sci-fi flick has even been labeled “Dances with Wolves in space,” but it’s still shaken off all criticism to become the highest-grossing film of all time.

Would Avatar have been as successful if Matt Damon had voiced one of the characters, though? And could you ever envision Molly Ringwald in Pretty Woman? Well, believe it or not, but those actors were handed those roles on a plate – then turned them down. They weren’t the only ones to make that mistake, either...

It’s hard to imagine anyone else but Jack Nicholson as The Joker in the 1989 version of Batman. But casting directors also tossed around the idea of John Lithgow in the role. The 3rd Rock From the Sun star didn’t see himself as a good fit in the devious role. He recalled his audition to Vulture in 2017, saying, “I tried to persuade him I was not right for the part, and I succeeded.”

John Travolta has admitted that he would “trade a few movies with Tom Hanks.” And of course that includes 1994 smash hit Forrest Gump. That one must be especially frustrating for Travolta when you consider that he actually turned down the role. Even worse, Hanks went on to win an Oscar for it.

At the turn of the 21st century, Mel Gibson was one of the hottest actors in Hollywood. That meant that he could be discerning with the parts he took – and the starring role in Gladiator didn’t appeal to him. The Braveheart actor found that the movie’s action scenes seemed a bit too rigorous for his liking. Plus he felt he had a few too many years on the clock to play the ancient Roman fighter. So the job went to Russell Crowe – and he won an Academy Award for his turn as Maximus.

If you’ve ever read the novel version of The Princess Bride, the sharp-tongued Italian character named Vizzini seems like the perfect part for Danny DeVito. Yet the actor turned down the role in the beloved 1987 flick for unknown reasons. Wallace Shawn ended up playing the part, and reportedly felt anxiety knowing whose shoes he had to fill.

In 2013 Hugh Jackman jokingly told Fabric magazine, “I cry myself to sleep every night,” over his decision to turn down the part of James Bond. But he did have a good reason for it. The Australian superstar said he was already playing one seminal role in Wolverine, and he didn’t want to take on another.

Jack Nicholson turned down the opportunity to play Michael Corleone in the 1972 classic The Godfather for one simple reason: he thought an Italian should play the part. Director Francis Ford Coppola seemingly came to agree with him, as he cast Italian-American actor Al Pacino in the role instead.

Rumor has it that Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow passed on Kate Winslet’s role of Rose in mega-hit Titanic. Still, the Iron Man star told Howard Stern in 2015 that she had been “in contention for it.” What’s more, the Goop guru explained that she “would throw a fit that [she] turned that down!”

Matt Damon won’t just take any film offer he receives. He turned down major roles including the titular role in Daredevil and Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. But it was a scheduling conflict that forced him to say no to starring in Avatar, which ended up grossing more money than any other film in history. After that, Damon could only laugh about the fact he didn’t take the part. He sarcastically reflected to Access Hollywood, “Clearly my not participating cost the film a lot.”

Leonardo DiCaprio admitted to GQ in 2008 that he regretted turning down the chance to play porn star Dirk Diggler. Mind you, the choice made didn’t turn out to be bad. “Boogie Nights is a movie I loved, and I wish I would’ve done,” he said. But he did Titanic instead, and Mark Wahlberg did Boogie Nights.

Emily Blunt was this close to becoming an Avenger. But scheduling conflicts forced her to turn down the role of Black Widow in Iron Man 2, which left the part open for actress Scarlett Johansson. Afterward, Blunt lamented to MTV News in 2009, “It just got complicated, so I think I had to pull out for my own sanity more than anything.”

Why didn’t Reese Witherspoon grab the role of Sidney Prescott in Scream? Well, the story is that she had the mistaken belief that it would be a cookie-cutter horror flick. However, the hugely successful original – which featured Neve Campbell as Prescott – would go on to spawn three blockbuster sequels.

Turning down the role of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey was a painful decision for Charlie Hunnam. Unfortunately, though, he had too much going on with his TV show, Sons of Anarchy, and a Guillermo del Toro movie, Crimson Peak. Stepping back from Fifty Shades meant he had to make a tearful call to director Sam Taylor-Johnson. He told entertainment magazine Variety in 2015, “We both cried our eyes out on the phone for 20 minutes.”

It’s been claimed that Julia Roberts opted for ensemble rom-com Valentine’s Day instead of a role in biopic The Blind Side. That’s too bad considering Sandra Bullock went home with an Academy Award for The Blind Side, while news magazine Time reckons Valentine’s Day is “just plain boring.”

Gabourey Sidibe famously played the titular character in the movie Precious, but her breakout role almost went to Jennifer Hudson. The singer and actress revealed in I Got This, her 2012 autobiography, that she said no to the film because she “wanted to try a role that had nothing to do whatsoever with [her] weight.” Indeed, Hudson had previously served as a spokesperson for Weight Watchers, so it made sense that she wanted to highlight other sides of herself.

Denzel Washington would come to regret passing on the title role in Michael Clayton. After all, the part would win an Oscar nomination for George Clooney. In 2012 Washington explained to men’s style magazine GQ why he turned it down. The superstar said, “It was the best material I had read in a long time, but I was nervous about a first-time director, and I was wrong.”

When Sean Connery left the James Bond franchise, Burt Reynolds stood at the front of the pack of potential replacements for the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. But the actor refused to step in as the famously suave spy for a simple reason: he thought viewers wouldn’t like their Bond to have an American accent. In 2015 he told USA Today that he had come to regret that decision, saying, “It was a stupid thing to say. I could’ve done it, and I could’ve done it well.”

Can you imagine Sean Connery in the robes of Gandalf the Grey? Well, you nearly didn’t have to. Connery reportedly didn’t play the beloved wizard in The Lord of the Rings trilogy because he “didn’t understand” the screenplay. The role, of course, went to Ian McKellen, who is now much admired throughout the world for his performance.

Emma Watson had already committed to Beauty and the Beast when she got the offer to play leading lady Mia in La La Land. She instantly knew she had to turn down the latter offer because, as she said in a 2017 SiriusXM Town Hall interview, “I knew I had horse training, I knew I had dancing, I knew I had three months of singing ahead of me, and I knew I had to be in London to really do that.” So, the part went to Emma Stone, who won an Oscar for her performance.

When Newsweek magazine talked to Angela Bassett in 2002, it asked her why she had said no to one particular role. Bassett told the magazine that she had passed on Monster’s Ball because she “couldn’t do that because it’s such a stereotype about black women and sexuality.” Halle Berry had no such worries, however, and she wound up with the part and an Oscar.

Elf came out in 2003, but writers finished the first draft of the movie’s script a decade earlier. At that time, Jim Carrey was supposedly attached to play the story’s main character, the excitable elf named Buddy. But when the film finally went into production, the actor had to back out in favor of other commitments. Plus he worried that his turn as the Grinch would affect his ability to play another Christmas character.

Back in the ’70s Martin Scorsese apparently approached Dustin Hoffman about the lead in Taxi Driver. Hoffman was having none of it and reportedly said of their meeting, “I was thinking, ‘What is [Scorsese] talking about?’ I thought the guy was crazy!” Robert De Niro eventually took the iconic role.

Will Smith told Wired magazine in 2004 that he had no regrets about turning down the part of Neo in The Matrix. The Men In Black star felt Keanu Reeves did the part more justice than he could have. Smith explained, “In the pitch, I just didn’t see it. I watched Keanu’s performance – and very rarely do I say this – but I would have messed it up… At that point I wasn’t smart enough as an actor to let the movie be… Let the movie and the director tell the story and don’t try and perform every moment.”

Michelle Pfeiffer has admitted that she has turned down quite a few big roles. Among others, she said no thanks to Pretty Woman and Thelma & Louise. But she told The Telegraph in 2013 her biggest regret was passing on “Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs.” The role earned Jodie Foster an Oscar.

Playing the leading role in Pretty Woman skyrocketed Julia Roberts to long-lasting fame – but she wasn’t the first actress considered to play Vivian Ward. Eighties-era teen icon Molly Ringwald revealed in a 2012 Reddit post that the Pretty Woman team approached her about starring in the flick. She said she had read the script, but she didn’t explain why she decided to turn the job down.

At the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014 Al Pacino revealed that his career could really have gone stellar. Yes, he could have made a splash in space as Han Solo in the original Star Wars. “I remember not [understanding the script] when I read it,” he explained to MTV. That was good news for Harrison Ford.

Cameron Crowe wrote Jerry Maguire with one actor planned for the titular role: Tom Hanks. But when it came time to cast the flick – which Crowe also directed – Hanks had a conflict. The Forrest Gump star was signed on to direct his own flick, That Thing You Do. So, Crowe hired Tom Cruise for the job instead.

When Cher spoke to U.K. tabloid The Mail on Sunday in 2013, she described her “biggest disappointment.” And it turned out that it was being “too sick to do Thelma & Louise. She went on, “It’s still a great film, but I have a saying: ‘What belongs to you, comes to you.’”

Truman Capote wrote the novella version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. When Hollywood came calling – adapting his book into a movie – he had one woman in mind to play Holly Golightly. Capote made it clear that he wanted Marilyn Monroe in the role, but the part was famously played by Audrey Hepburn. And some say he disliked the latter’s take on the character he wrote.

Kevin Costner has made some bold choices in his career, but there is one he might have regretted some. Costner could have been The Shawshank Redemption’s Andy Dufresne had he apparently not been toiling away on Waterworld. Unfortunately for Costner, Waterworld was a bit of a damp squib while Shawshank is a perennial favorite with audiences.

Superstar Bruce Willis just didn’t care for the idea of what would turn out to be one of Hollywood’s biggest hits. “I passed on Ghost because I thought, ‘A romance with a dead guy?’” said Willis to Ain’t It Cool News in 2007. His confusion over the concept certainly paid off for Patrick Swayze, though.

After his star-making turn as a greaser called Fonzie on Happy Days, Henry Winkler was afraid he’d continue to be typecast. So he turned down the chance to play leading man Danny Zuko in the classic movie musical Grease. In 2017 he told seniors interest group AARP that he didn’t regret his decision, but he still wished he hadn’t been so analytical about the choice. He said, “It’s that I turned it down intellectually instead of instinctually. Listen to your gut – it knows everything.”

Can you picture it? Magnum and the lost ark. Well, it came close to reality. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas originally wanted Tom Selleck for Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Luckily for Harrison Ford, Selleck was committed to the TV series Magnum P.I. at the time and couldn’t be released from his contract.

Whoopi Goldberg’s performance as Deloris Van Cartier in Sister Act is equal parts beloved and iconic. Yet the role was written with another actress in mind: Bette Midler. Years later, she explained to U.K. newspaper Metro why she didn’t take the job. She said in 2010 that her fans likely didn’t “want to see [her] in a wimple.”

Amazingly, Emily Browning passed on Twilight before she even auditioned for the part of Bella, which eventually went to Kristen Stewart. Browning told HuffPost in 2014 that she isn’t comfortable with that level of fame. “I don’t think I would have been able to handle it,” she said.

Tom Cruise had a string of hit movies in the 1980s, and he could have continued that trend with Footloose. However, after starring in Risky Business and Top Gun, he signed on to star in All the Right Moves. This meant that he had no time to film the dance-centric film, which left the leading role of Ren open for actor Kevin Bacon instead.

Nic Cage usually knows a good thing when he sees one, but there was one time he didn’t. Cage hinted to Newsweek in 2015 that he “probably would have benefited” from taking the role of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He dropped out because of “different things going on in my life at the time,” which was good news for Viggo Mortensen.

Sandra Bullock had long dreamed of starring in a movie about a professional boxer. By the time Million Dollar Baby got the green light, though, the actress had signed on to star in the film Crash. So, actress Hilary Swank took on the role of Maggie Fitzgerald instead, and won an Oscar for her knockout performance.

Christina Applegate could have had Reese Witherspoon’s career if she’d accepted the part of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. Applegate told ETonline in 2015 that it was because she’d already played a similar role on TV. “I got scared of kind of repeating myself. What a stupid move,” she joked.

When you think about The Shining, you probably envision Jack Nicholson’s wildly smiling face through a splintered wooden door. Now try and picture that same image but with Robin Williams grinning in place instead. Supposedly, the movie’s director, Stanley Kubrick, initially wanted the Mrs. Doubtfire actor to play Jack Torrance. It’s unclear why Williams turned down the opportunity.

Josh Hartnett deeply regrets not taking on Batman for director Christopher Nolan. “I was so focused on not being pigeonholed and so scared of being considered only one thing as an actor,” he told Playboy magazine in 2015 of his decision. And, of course, eventual Batman Christian Bale majorly benefited from Hartnett’s unwise choice.