Justice & Law Quote by Jan de Bont

"In regards to The Haunting, people compared it to the old movie, which is unfair. We didn't have the rights to the movie. I couldn't duplicate a single thing because that would have been legal infringement"

Jan de Bont, Director

About this Quote

Jan de Bont isn’t defending The Haunting so much as reminding everyone how the remake machine actually works: audiences demand fidelity, studios sell nostalgia, and the law quietly sets the boundaries of what “faithful” can even mean. His wording is tellingly bureaucratic - “rights,” “duplicate,” “legal infringement” - the language of a filmmaker forced to speak like a lawyer because the argument isn’t purely artistic. It’s industrial.

The specific intent is reputational triage. De Bont frames negative comparisons to the 1963 film as structurally illegitimate, not just aesthetically uncharitable. He’s not saying his version is better; he’s saying the premise of judging it as an update of a beloved classic is a category error. If you can’t quote the original, can you really be asked to rhyme with it?

The subtext is a quiet indictment of how remakes get marketed. The public hears “The Haunting” and assumes lineage; de Bont points out he was denied the very inheritance the title implies. That gap - between what viewers think they’re buying and what filmmakers are permitted to make - becomes the movie’s invisible handicap. It also hints at a deeper frustration: directors get blamed for not delivering the “same,” while studios and rights-holders control what “same” is allowed to look like.

Context matters: this is late-90s Hollywood, where IP is king and risk is managed through recognition. De Bont’s quote exposes the irony that even within IP culture, ownership can be so fragmented that the remake can’t legally be itself.

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Jan de Bont (born October 22, 1943) is a Director from Netherland.

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