Hollywood Has Remade Nearly Every Hit 80s Movie

Hollywood’s penchant for remakes, reboots, and sequels of 80s movies has left very few Reagan-era films for studios to resurrect.

A look at the list of the top 15 highest-grossing films of the 80s reveals that just three have not been revived or revamped: the Steven Spielberg-directed E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982); Tootsie (1982), starring Dustin Hoffman; and the Best Picture-winning hit Rain Man (1988).

The twelfth highest-grossing film of the 80s was Top Gun, the high-flying action flick that launched Tom Cruise to superstar status. True to form, it, too, is being turned into a franchise.

In an interview this week while promoting his new film Mummy (which is a reboot of the 1999 film of the same name), Cruise confirmed that Top Gun 2 is “definitely happening.”

This Memorial Day weekend will see the release of Paramount’s celebrity-studded big screen adaptation of the series Baywatch, which debuted in 1989.

TV is also inundating audiences with revivals of popular 80s sitcoms.

This year, ABC announced the return of the highly rated, blue-collar sitcom Roseanne. Last year, Sony Pictures Television announced talks to reboot a slew of classic sitcoms from legendary writer-producer Norman Lear.

While resurrecting and remaking movies from a much-loved decade has seen success, the trend has also backfired for a number of Hollywood studios.

Last year, Sony’s all-female reboot of Ghostbusters grossed $128 million and struggled to recoup the $144 million required to make the Paul Feig-directed film.

Despite some misses, Hollywood studios are currently prepping dozens of remakes, including a gender-swapped Splash (1984), Three Men and a Baby, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989).

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson.