FILM NOIR ORIGINALS VS REMAKES PER IMDB RATINGS

An interesting little study from Solomon at the Blackboard about the IMDB ratings of classic noir originals (40s-50s-60s) and their various remakes. As the line chart (below) indicates, none of the 40+ films in the sample had the remake score a higher rating than the original, though 5 of them had scores that were at least 90% of the original:

The average IMDB score for remakes is just about 80% of the score achieved by the originals. It's also clear that the folks who opted for remakes picked some of the better films of the classic noir era, which probably made it more difficult to match the scores.

The data that would be really interesting here would be to see the average for those folk who saw each film and cast votes for both in the IMDB ratings. That's a level of detail we don't have readily available, however. Our guess is that the score gap is somewhat greater, with the remakes scoring in the low 70% range among such voters.