East Meets West: 10 Asian Movies Remade by Hollywood

Remade as: Eight Below

Based on a true story, Antarctica is a drama about several dogs left behind by a Japanese expedition to the South Pole – and how some of those dogs survived the brutal conditions until the explorers returned 11 months later. (Of course, the film is largely conjecture, since the dogs never gave a satisfactory account of their actions during the explorers’ absence.) The film, which boasts a Vangelis soundtrack (he composed it on the heels of his work in Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner) was a big hit in Japan in 1983.

Disney remade it 23 years later as Eight Below, updating the story from the 1950s to the present and casting the late Paul Walker and Bruce Greenwood as the scientists who risk all to rescue the heroic dogs who’d saved them. Disney being Disney, it allowed three times as many dogs to survive.

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