So you are in Hollywood and somebody asks you to remake a movie, now remember, you are a Hollywood producer or director, somebody who has been trained from birth to believe they are creative titans, that their imagination has no limits and that you above all fellow human beings understand the medium on every intricate level. You also know you are so superior to other Hollywood producers and directors that there is no common ground, you're a genius, they are complete hacks without any talent, none of them have talent, you're the only one with the true spark. Furthermore Hollywood is the ultimate expression of creativity, a book may have sold hundreds of millions of copies and is beloved around the world, it doesn't exist until Hollywood puts it on the map and fixed everything that's wrong with it to begin with.
Now, somebody undeservedly higher up the food chain has tasked you to make a film, and in this case it's a remake and you're stuck …
It's not a book adaptation, books are so insignificant compared to Hollywood it's almost a divine act of ascension. Hollywood gives the book its true meaning and form, the book is merely a sketch or a stub at best, and writers with their tiny amount of talent, outshone at every level by Hollywood producers and directors is irrelevant.
You're remaking a TV movie from an era where everything was stupid. In fact everything in Hollywood that wasn't touched by your divine hands is stupid because you are the one person that raises Hollywood several levels all by themselves, by your mere presence.
If you make a straight adaptation, you would acknowledge that the people who made the original actually possessed some measure of talent, a preposterous notion to begin with. The original can only be from a time where the creators were talentless and the viewer had no taste.
You have to make it your own, you have to wipe away all memory of the original, change it so that your version becomes the definitive version, perfect in every way and so superior that people nostalgic for the old version will be drawn in by nostalgia and then be stunned by your bold creative vision.
Hollywood has a huge arsenal of such wide nuance and subtlety that you're spoiled for choice. The Grimdark and the Haha, you're stooopid approaches.
The Grimdark involves taking any series, even a kid's show like Power Rangers, treat it as if it's as dead serious as a Dostojevski novel and make it dark, gritty and humorless, drain away all hints of colour and have everyone so mean at least one person dies or is seriously hurt so that you have high stakes for the final confrontation. It's generally considered the superior art form, dark and gritty makes EVERYTHING better if only people would let you.
The Haha, you're stooopid, is all about showing your post-modern detachment vs the subject. You know people have fond memories of seeing it as kids, you know the truth, it's from an age where everything was ridiculous, but wasn't self-aware like we are today. Every characters is now mean AND incompetent and most importantly they are delusional, they believe they are the heroes of the story, skilled and able, but they are idiots who have no clue about themselves. These movies are the perfect chance to show you how hip and talented you are by showing vulgar, ordinary people going about without a clue, so unlike your own perfect destiny, lined with an infinite supply of talent all the way to the "pantheon of the greatests evar …" The remake becomes the perfect parody of itself, relentlessly mean to the nostalgic "See how dumb this was ? And you like it you stupid schmuck, and now you pay for it, in money and the huge bad-tasting disappointment !", all of the appeal is taken away, replaced by dumb, stock jokes because you wouldn't want to waste a single molecule of talent on this project.
There is a third way, the straight adaptation, which is the way deluded lesser producers and directors would go, it is an abomination to your talent and ability, it is the death of your creative soul because it would have to acknowledge that the work of someone else is worthy of recognition or could be mistaken as being on the same level, it's like piling on a multitude of cumulative eternities in hell to suffer all at the same time. It's something so repulsive to your ego that the mere thought almost forces you to smash that expensive cocktail glass in your own face and tear away your perfect flesh in a kind of extreme self-destructive abjuration of the very thoughtcrime born from this hellish concept.
True story …