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Q: What is the least amount of time passed before a movie has been remade? I know "Cabin Fever" was remade about 10 years after the original.

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Author: 
Adam Thomlison / TV Media

Unfortunately, that question is not as straightforward as it sounds.

British entertainment site MusicMagpie took a big-data approach to the issue of film remakes, gathering information on 1,438 films that were either remakes or remade, going all the way back to 1902. Regarding time gaps, the authors found that a whopping 21 films on the list were remade within a year of their original release, however these were mostly "regional adaptations of foreign titles."

That's not really what you're asking about.

Closer to the spirit of your question would be the various superhero remakes we've seen recently. In that case, it's basically a tie between old frenemies the Hulk and Spider-Man. The 2008 film "The Incredible Hulk," starring Edward Norton as the famed doctor with the angry, green alter-ego, came just five years after "Hulk," which told the same story with Eric Bana in the title role.

Meanwhile (or almost meanwhile), 2012 saw Andrew Garfield star in "The Amazing Spider-Man," a mere five years before Tom Holland retold Spidey's origin story in "Spider-Man: Homecoming."

Complicating things further, these super-cases weren't even included in MusicMagpie's study. The authors of the study argued that superhero films like these fall under the category of reboots, rather than remakes, because they often (though not always) feature significant story differences.

Even your example, "Cabin Fever," is a bit complicated. There have actually been five different movies with that title, though only two -- made in 2002 and 2016 -- were about a group of friends catching a flesh-eating disease at a remote cabin.

 

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