From Cellular to Connected: Tracing a Global and Transcultural Odyssey

According to most sources, Connected (2008) is popularly known as the first Chinese remake of a Hollywood film. Although Hong Kong cinema has long borrowed and reworked Hollywood cinema in its own inimitable way as Herman Yau's Taxi Hunter (1993) does from its 1993 Hollywood source Falling Down (to name one film among many), Connected differs from this usual practice as being the first official and legitimate remake of a Hollywood film (He, 2010: 179-183). As Hilary Hongjin He has pointed out, Connected belongs to a new category of remake, namely those involving "legal purchase of the copyright and public acknowledgement of the original film before the release of the remake" (180).