In the entire history of cinema I cannot name a single significant foreign film that was a remake of a motion picture made in the United States. However, the number of American remakes of major foreign movies must be close to 1,000.

Sometimes the remake is only approximate. “The Seven Samurai” (1954), Akira Kurosawa’s action masterpiece of feudal Japan, was remade six years later with the story transposed to the American Old West in “The Magnificent Seven.”

Sometimes a remake is designed to resemble the original film as closely as possible, particularly when both are based on a wildly popular novel, as is the case with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Author Stieg Larsson died in 2004 before the books in his now-famous Millennium series were published. The three books in the series, including Dragon Tattoo, have sold nearly 30 million copies in 40 countries. After the success of a 2009 Swedish film set in Stockholm and the surrounding country where the stories take place, Hollywood smelled money.

Read more: Cinema Uprising