It's a common complaint: "Hollywood doesn't have any new ideas," and it's evident in the reimaginings of everything from "Annie" to "A Nightmare on Elm Street."
It's not a new concept, though. Take "Beauty and the Beast," a "tale as old as time" (or in this case, 1740 — the year Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's "La Belle et la Bete" was published, the first known version of the story), which has been redone by director Bill Condon and with British actors Emma Watson and Dan Stevens in the title roles. It has brought in more than $480 million at the box office so far, and Stevens credits the story's lineage for part of this success.
"It's familiar. It's as if the animated version set the stage for this one," the 34-year-old actor says, referring to the 1991 Disney cartoon of the same name. "And going back a bit before that, there was an American TV series (starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman) that I recall was quite popular. It sort of resurrected the story for contemporary audiences and paved the way for the Disney version."