Twin films

Twin films are films with the same or similar plots produced and released within a close proximity of time by two different film studios.^[1] The phenomenon can result from two or more production companies investing in similar scripts at the same time, resulting in a race to distribute the films to audiences.^[2][3] Some attribute twin films to industrial espionage, the movement of staff between studios, or that the same screenplays are sent to several film studios before being accepted. Another possible explanation is if the films deal with topical issues, such as volcanic eruptions, reality television, terrorist attacks, or significant anniversaries, resulting in multiple discovery of the concept.^[3]

While twin films are often big budget films, a mockbuster can be made with a low budget, with similar titles, aesthetics, or theme as blockbuster films.^[4] Mockbusters are usually given more limited release and marketing, intending to take advantage of the public interest in the topic driven by the major film.

Avoiding twin films

Screenwriter Terry Rossio notes that there are always film projects with similar subjects being developed in multiple studios, and that usually only one of them makes it into production in a given period of time, and therefore twin films are better regarded as exceptions to this tendency.^[5] For example, the release of the 2015 Whitey Bulger biopic Black Mass led to the abandonment of a planned film about Bulger that would have been produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.^[6]

The 2008 film Who Do You Love?, about American record label Chess Records, had its widespread release delayed until 2010 to avoid competing with Cadillac Records, a higher-budget 2008 film on the same subject.^[7]

In one case, for the 1974 film The Towering Inferno, the fear of having competing action thrillers, both set in a burning skyscraper, convinced two Hollywood studios to merge their productions into one (all-star) film.^[8]

Notable examples

Notable examples of twin films are included in this list:^{[9][10][11][12]}

First film	Release date	Second film	Release date	Similarities
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	1920	Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	1920	Based on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)[13]
Ingagi	1930	Africa Speaks!	1930	Both exploitation films about an expedition in the Belgian Congo.[14]
Dishonored	1931	Mata Hari	1931	Both films are about female spies. MGM studios, alarmed by the competition that the Sternberg-Dietrich phenomena posed to star Greta Garbo, responded with the copycat Mata Hari the same year.[15]
The Black Cat	1934	Maniac	1934	Both are loose adaptations of The Black Cat.[16][17]
Young Mr. Lincoln	1939	Abe Lincoln in Illinois	1940	Both are about Abraham Lincoln.[18][19]
Alice au pays des Merveilles	1949	Alice in Wonderland	1951	Both are feature-length animated adaptations of Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The Walt Disney Company would sue the French film's distributors to prevent release of the British version in the U.S., and the case was extensively covered in Time magazine.[20] The company that released the British version accused Disney of trying to exploit their film by releasing its version at virtually the same time.[20]
Sign of the Pagan	1954	Attila	1954	Both films about Attila and his invasion of the Western Roman Empire; a contemporary review in The New York Times writes, "Attila the Hun, quite ignored by moviemakers up to now, is about to step into the limelight in two new films."[21]
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines	1965	The Great Race	1965	Both are slapstick films about a race in the early 1900s, inspired by the success of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).[22][23][24] The films were released two weeks apart.[25]
You're a Big Boy Now	1966	The Graduate	1967	Also Benjamin (1968). All are coming-of-age comedy-drama films about a young man being pursued by an older woman.[26]
Leo the Last	1970	The Landlord	1970	Both deal with issues of class and race and feature an upper-class man who moves into a lower-class black neighborhood and gets involved with the residents.[27]
The Strawberry Statement	1970	Getting Straight	1970	Also The Revolutionary and R. P. M. (1970). All are dramas about campus revolt.[28]
Bloody Mama	1970	The Grissom Gang	1971	Both based on the life story of Ma Barker.[29]
Godspell	1973	Jesus Christ Superstar	1973	Both adaptations of 1971 Broadway musicals based on the life of Jesus Christ.[30][31]
The Killing of Angel Street	1981	Heatwave	1982	Both were loosely based on the disappearance of Australian anti-development activist Juanita Nielsen.[32][33]
Wild Style	1983	Beat Street	1984	Both are well-received old-school hip hop films, focusing on all four pillars of hip hop culture.[34][35]
Top Gun	1986	Iron Eagle	1986	Both are films about fighter pilots.[11]
Platoon	1986	Full Metal Jacket	1987	Also Hamburger Hill (1987) and 84C MoPic (1989). All are bleak, violent and unglamorized depictions of the Vietnam War.[36]
K-9	1989	Turner & Hooch	1989	Both are buddy cop-dog films about a police officer who gets a dog for a partner.[12]
DeepStar Six	1989	Leviathan	1989	Also The Abyss; all are underwater thrillers involving explorers discovering strange new (and in most of the movies hostile) creatures in the ocean.[11]
American Me	1992	Blood In Blood Out	1993	Both films depict gang violence in the Mexican-American community in California. At one point, American Me star and director Edward James Olmos was offered to star in and direct Blood In Blood Out, but passed on the film due to creative differences.[37] Floyd Mutrux is credited as a co-writer on both films.
Carnosaur	1993	Jurassic Park	1993	Both are action adventure films involving the genetic recreation of dinosaurs or prehistoric animals. Both are also based on books.[12]
Tombstone	1993	Wyatt Earp	1994	Both are Wyatt Earp biopics.[11]
Braveheart	1995	Rob Roy	1995	Both are adventure/war biopics set in Scotland.[10]
Gordy	1994	Babe	1995	Both are family films starring piglets.[10]
Showgirls	1995	Striptease	1996	Also Stripteaser (1996). All three are erotic drama films featuring a lead character involved in the stripper profession.[38]
Dante's Peak	1997	Volcano	1997	Also Volcano: Fire on the Mountain (1997). All three are disaster films centered around volcanic eruptions.[9][10]
Kundun	1997	Seven Years in Tibet	1997	Both are fact-based dramas set in mid-20th century Tibet, with the 14th Dalai Lama as a main character.[10]
Murder at 1600	1997	Absolute Power	1997	Both films center around a Washington, D.C. murder investigation involving the President/at the White House.[39][40]
Antz	1998	A Bug's Life	1998	Both are computer-animated films about insects, starring a non-conformist ant who falls in love with an ant princess, leaves the mound, and eventually returns and is hailed as a hero.[10]
Deep Impact	1998	Armageddon	1998	Also Doomsday Rock (1997), Asteroid (1997), Judgment Day (1998), and Tycus (1998). All are global catastrophic risk disaster films centered around an impending impact event that threatens to end most or all life on Earth.[9][10]
Saving Private Ryan	1998	The Thin Red Line	1998	Also Life Is Beautiful (1997). All are dramas about, or involving, World War II.[10]
Sliding Doors	1998	Run Lola Run	1998	Both films tell the same story of a woman multiple times, changing a minor detail at the beginning and depicting how that change drastically affects the outcome.[41]
54	1998	Last Days of Disco	1998	Both films are set again the backdrop of the waning disco era of the late 1970s.[42]
The Truman Show	1998	EDtv	1999	Also Pleasantville (1998). All are films in which a person or a large group of people's lives are broadcast on TV.[10]
The Matrix	1999	The Thirteenth Floor	1999	Also eXistenZ (1999);[10] all are science fiction films involving virtual reality in a computer system, and the theme of whether the world is real or an illusion.
Anywhere But Here	1999	Tumbleweeds	1999	Both films concern a mother-daughter pair who drive across the country to settle in California.[43]
Entrapment	1999	The Thomas Crown Affair	1999	Both are caper films focused on the relationship between an attractive female insurance investigator and a male thief who steals an expensive painting by a famous artist.[10]
End of Days	1999	Stigmata	1999	Also Lost Souls (2000); all are supernatural religious horror films involving the Catholic Church. Both End of Days and Stigmata star Gabriel Byrne as a main character. Both End of Days and Lost Souls involve the theme of Satan taking possession of a man's body.[10]
10 Things I Hate About You	1999	Hamlet	2000	Also O (2001); All are modern-day adaptations of William Shakespeare plays, featuring Julia Stiles as the female lead.[44]
Bring It On	2000	Sugar & Spice	2001	Both films are comedies about high school cheerleading squads. Sugar & Spice star Marley Shelton was the second choice to play Bring It On character Torrance Shipman, prior to Kirsten Dunst being cast in the role, after previously turning it down.[45] Also, according to Bring It On star Gabrielle Union, she and many of her Bring It On co-stars also auditioned for Sugar & Spice.[46]
Scary Movie	2000	Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth	2000	Both are horror movie spoofs featuring a killer wearing a Ghostface mask; Scary Movie additionally had the working title Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween.[10]
Mission to Mars	2000	Red Planet	2000	Also Blood Red Planet (2000) and Ghosts of Mars (2001). All are science fiction adventure films about expeditions to Mars.[47][10] However, Ghosts of Mars is a horror film.
Wonder Boys	2000	Finding Forrester	2000	Both are films involving a writer and his friendship with a student.[10]
The Score	2001	Heist	2001	Both are crime thriller films involving a major robbery.[10]
Chasing Liberty	2004	First Daughter	2004	Both are romantic comedy films about the rebellious daughter of the President of the United States.[11]
Red Eye	2005	Flightplan	2005	Both are thriller films set on airplanes.[10]
Capote	2005	Infamous	2006	Both are drama films about Truman Capote and the writing of In Cold Blood.[9][10] The confluence of the two films led to an incident in 2003 when Infamous writer-director Douglas McGrath called producer Bingham Ray to announce that his script had been finished, and Ray responded "I know, I've got it on my desk!" before realizing that he actually had the screenplay to Capote.[9]
The Zodiac	2005	Zodiac	2007	Also Curse of the Zodiac (2007);[48] All are films based on the story of the Zodiac Killer.
Zzyzx	2006	Zyzzyx Road	2006	Both are thrillers about people trying to hide a dead body on Zzyzx Road in California.[49]
United 93	2006	Flight 93	2006	Both are dramas about United Airlines Flight 93.[10]
The Prestige	2006	The Illusionist	2006	Both are films about 19th-century magicians.[10]
Happy Feet	2006	Surf's Up	2007	Both are computer-animated comedy films about penguins.[50][38]
Eagle Eye	2008	Echelon Conspiracy	2009	Both center around a government AI supercomputer that is tasked with protecting the US through ubiquitous surveillance and endless access to nearly all technology, which becomes too autonomous and powerful.[51]
Repo! The Genetic Opera	2008	Repo Men	2010	Set in a dystopian future, both films are about one or more corporate-employed "repo men" who fatally repossess artificial organs when patients default on their payments.[52]
Observe and Report	2009	Paul Blart: Mall Cop	2009	Both are comedy films about an overweight mall cop.[2]
Gamer	2009	Surrogates	2009	Also Avatar (2009); Science fiction films in which people control physical remotely-operated bodies.[2][53][54]
Despicable Me	2010	Megamind	2010	Both are computer-animated films featuring a stereotypical villain as the protagonist.[55]
Skyline	2010	Battle: Los Angeles	2011	Both are alien invasion movies that primarily take place in Los Angeles. Sony Pictures, the studio of Battle, initiated legal action against the directors and special effects gurus of Skyline for allegedly ripping off ideas and equipment for their similar film. Sony later dismissed their arbitration, stating they were satisfied their own special effects were not used in Skyline.[56]
No Strings Attached	2011	Friends with Benefits	2011	Both are romantic comedies about a pair of friends who have a casual, non-romantic sexual relationship and eventually fall in love. No Strings Attached had the working title Friends with Benefits, but had to be renamed due to a conflict with the other film.[57]
Yann Samuell's War of the Buttons	2011	Christophe Barratier's War of the Buttons	2011	Both are French film adaptations of the 1912 novel War of the Buttons, released a week apart from one another, though the first was set in the Algerian War while the second was set in World War II.[58]
The Raid	2011	Dredd	2012	Both films deal with a law enforcement officer infiltrating a tall residential building in pursuit of a crime lord, wherein the crime lord attempts to turn the residents against the officer.[59]
Extraterrestrial	2011	Seeking a Friend for the End of the World	2012	Also 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011) and Melancholia (2011). All are apocalyptic science fiction films.[60][61]
Quartet	2012	A Late Quartet	2012	Both are about the members of a classical music quartet facing old age.[62]
Mirror Mirror	2012	Snow White and the Huntsman	2012	Both are loose adaptations of the fairy tale Snow White. Also the Spanish 2012 film Blancanieves adapts Snow White, using black-and-white silent cinematography like the 2012 French film The Artist.[63]
Upside Down	2012	Patema Inverted	2013	Both are a romance between characters of twin worlds, each with gravity opposite to the other.[64]
The Other Son	2012	Like Father, Like Son	2013	Both films revolve around two young men who were switched at birth and raised by families from contrasting socioeconomic strata.[65]
A Hijacking	2012	Captain Phillips	2013	Both are about a pirate attack on a cargo ship off the coast of Somalia.[66]
Jobs	2013	Steve Jobs	2015	Both are Steve Jobs biopics.[67]
Olympus Has Fallen	2013	White House Down	2013	Both are action films about terrorist attacks on the White House.[68]
Oblivion	2013	After Earth	2013	Both films include a protagonist who must fight for survival on a post-apocalyptic Earth.[69]
This Is the End	2013	The World's End	2013	Also Rapture-Palooza (2013); all are apocalyptic comedy films.[70] Both This Is the End and Rapture-Palooza star Craig Robinson as a main character.
The Double	2013	Enemy	2013	Both are about a man who finds his physical doppelgänger in a seemingly totalitarian state.[71]
Yves Saint Laurent	2014	Saint Laurent	2014	Both are Yves Saint Laurent biopics.[68]
The Equalizer	2014	John Wick	2014	Both films involve a highly trained protagonist who seeks vengeance through killing.[72]
Life After Beth	2014	Burying the Ex	2014	Also Warm Bodies (2013). All three are romantic comedies involving zombies.[73]
Moonwalkers	2015	Operation Avalanche	2016	Both are films based on Moon landing conspiracy theories.[74]
The Beauty Inside	2015	Every Day	2018	Both are a romance between a woman and a spirit who wakes up every day in a different body.[75][76]
Marguerite	2015	Florence Foster Jenkins	2016	Both films are based on the life of Florence Foster Jenkins.[77]
The Martian	2015	Approaching the Unknown	2016	Also Forsaken (2018). Both are about a man who is stranded in space on a mission to Mars and has to figure out a way to survive.[78]
Spectre	2015	Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation	2015	Both films feature the protagonists chasing after secret criminal organisations through Austria, Morocco and London while their intelligence agencies are shutting down.[79][80] Paramount had to advance the release date of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation to avoid conflicting with Spectre.[81]
Other People	2016	The Hollars	2016	Both are about a male writer living in New York City who returns to his hometown for his mother dying of cancer.[82][83]
Christine	2016	Kate Plays Christine	2016	Both are films about Christine Chubbuck, though Kate Plays Christine is a documentary about the acting process.[84]
Patriots Day	2016	Stronger	2017	Both films revolve around the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath.[85][86]
Captain Fantastic	2016	The Glass Castle	2017	Both are about a large family who lives secluded from the civilized world and deal with its moral ramifications.[87]
Anthropoid	2016	The Man with the Iron Heart	2017	Both films are about Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich.[88]
The Jungle Book	2016	Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle	2018	Both are live-action, CGI-heavy adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, though the 2016 film is a remake of the 1967 animated musical film.[89]
Crowhurst	2017	The Mercy	2018	Both films are about Donald Crowhurst's ill-fated entry in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a non-stop round-the-world sailing competition. Uniquely, these films not only have an identical subject, but were also distributed by the same studio, namely StudioCanal: according to the head of StudioCanal UK, Danny Perkins, the company bought the low-budget production Crowhurst "so we could control it".[90]
Sink or Swim	2018	Swimming with Men	2018	Both are about a man who is facing a midlife crisis and joins an all-male synchronised swimming team.[91]
Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich	2018	The Happytime Murders	2018	Both are dark comedies featuring puppets.[92]
Beautiful Boy	2018	Ben Is Back	2018	Both are melodramas about a family with a teenage son facing a drug addiction.[93][94]
Skate Kitchen	2018	Mid90s	2018	Both are coming of age stories about a group of skateboarding teenagers played by inexperienced actors who skateboard in real life. In both films, the primary character is the newest member of the group and has a contentious relationship with their single mother.[95][96]
Widows	2018	The Kitchen	2019	Both are about the law-abiding wives of criminals who take up their husbands' criminal plans when they are gone.[97][98]
Lez Bomb	2018	Happiest Season	2020	Both films revolve around lesbians who plan to come out to their conservative families during the holidays, only to be confronted by their ex-boyfriends; Lez Bomb is set on Thanksgiving while Happiest Season takes place on Christmas.[99]
Fyre Fraud	2019	Fyre	2019	Both are documentaries about the Fyre Festival.[100]
The Haunting of Sharon Tate	2019	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood	2019	Both are films about Sharon Tate and her murder. Although the former is a horror thriller film that dramatizes the events, the latter takes place in an alternate universe where the murder did not take place.[101]
The King's Letters	2019	Forbidden Dream	2019	Both are about King Sejong the Great and his patronage of scholarship.[102]
Ujda Chaman	2019	Bala	2019	Both movies are about men facing premature baldness, hence becoming a subject of social ridicule and facing problems finding a spouse.[103]
The Curse of La Llorona	2019	La Llorona	2019	Both films are about the legend of La Llorona.[104]
Killer Spider	2020	Holy Spider	2022	Both are dramatizations of the case of Saeed Hanaei, a serial killer who targeted sex workers in Iran.[105]
Pinocchio	2022	Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio	2022	Also Pinocchio: A True Story (2022) and Pinocchio and the Water of Life (2023). All films are based on The Adventures of Pinocchio. Three of the films—Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Pinocchio: A True Story, and The Adventures of Pinocchio—star Tom Kenny.[106]
Violent Night	2022	The Mean One	2022	Also Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022). All are films about a murderous Santa Claus figure.[107]
Elvis	2022	Priscilla	2023	Both are films about or revolve around Elvis Presley.[108]
The Covenant	2023	Kandahar	2023	Also Warhorse One. All films are set in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.[109]
The Great Escaper	2023	The Last Rifleman	2023	Based on the true story of Bernard Jordan, both are films about an elderly World War II veteran who escapes his nursing home in order to attend a milestone anniversary commemorations of the Normandy landings in France.[110]
Reality	2023	Winner	2024	Both are films about American whistleblower Reality Winner.[111]
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey	2023	The Mouse Trap	2024	Also Bambi: The Reckoning (2025). All three are slasher films based on famous works only recently made part of the public domain – Bambi, Winnie-the-Pooh, and the Steamboat Willie design of Mickey Mouse, respectively.[112]
The Pope's Exorcist	2023	The Exorcism	2024	Both films star Russell Crowe, in which he plays some form of exorcist.[113]
Totally Killer	2023	Time Cut	2024	Both films are about a female high school student who is accidentally transported back in time and must unmask an unidentified serial killer who terrorized their town and prevent the murder of a female relative who is in high school at the time.[114]
The First Omen	2024	Immaculate	2024	Both films are about young American nuns who travel to Rome, Italy, and become unexpectedly pregnant with what turns out to be a demon fetus/the antichrist.[115][116]
Piece by Piece	2024	Better Man	2024	Both movies are musical biopics about artists with the surname Williams depicted in an unorthodox fashion: Piece by Piece shows Pharrell Williams' life through Lego animation, while Better Man depicts Robbie Williams as a CGI chimpanzee.[117][118][119]

Other meanings

One story from two perspectives

The term "twin films" has also been used for films produced by the same production company with the purpose of telling the same story from two different points of view:

• Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Françoise (1964) and Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Jean-Marc (1964) use the same cast to tell the same story from two different points of view.^[120]
• I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) and I Am Curious (Blue) (1968) are a pair of Swedish drama films, both telling the story of director Vilgot Sjöman who plans to make a social film starring his lover Lena Nyman, a theatre student.^[121] Blue is a second version of Yellow (the colours taken from the Swedish flag), taking place before and after the first film. It has a more somber and bitterly satiric style, and a further explication of the framing narrative.^[122]
• The World War II films Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) are about the Battle of Iwo Jima, told from the perspective of United States Marines and Japanese soldiers.^[123][124]
• The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2014) was a trio of films following Conor Ludlow and Eleanor Rigby, a young married couple living in New York. Him looks at their relationship from Conor's angle, while Her follows Eleanor's. Them has the two twin films edited into a linear story.^[125]

Multiple-language films

The term "twin films" has also been used for multiple-language versions of films:

• Raavan (2010) and Raavanan (2010) use similar casts filming the scenes in both Hindi and Tamil.^[126]

See also

• Barbenheimer