'Sideways' Returns, Uncorked For Japan(1)

Here's the pitch: Two guys, old college buddies. One's a has-been TV actor, the other a never-been writer. The actor is about to get married, and the writer loves wine, so before the wedding they drive up the coast of California for a weeklong vineyard-visiting road trip.

Sound familiar? Perhaps that's because it's the premise for "Sideways," the 2005 Oscar nominee for best picture (and winner for best adapted screenplay).

This time, though, it's a little different: the bonding friends are Japanese.

As film industries in China, Russia, Japan and India have grown exponentially, particularly when it comes to homegrown fare, United States studios have taken the phrase "Think globally, act locally" to heart. Nearly every studio has set up an international operation for producing and distributing original movies made in local languages. Now a handful of those studios are scouring their catalogs, seeking films (box-office smashes and middling performers alike) to remake for new audiences.

The Walt Disney Company is turning its "High School Musical" franchise into a cottage industry, redoing the teen song-and-dance phenomenon one country at a time. A new version of "Cellular," the 2004 kidnapping thriller starring Kim Basinger, has already come out in China. And Japanese translations of the Patrick Swayze-Demi Moore blockbuster "Ghost" and the Melanie Griffith-Harrison Ford hit "Working Girl" are in development.

The Japanese version of "Sideways" (which for the moment is still being called "Sideways") is one of the most intriguing of these cross-cultural experiments. As in the original, the action takes place in California and the road trip involves plenty of wine talk, a leather-harness-clad chase, a jealous-rage beating and a wine-spittoon guzzle.

Plenty of other details, however, have been changed. The two male characters (Michio and Daisuke instead of Miles and Jack) now head from Los Angeles to Napa Valley, instead of traipsing up to Santa Barbara. While wine sales are on the rise in Japan — thanks in part to the comic-book sensation "Kami no Shizuku," or "The Drops of God," about a heroic odyssey to find the best wines in the world — a lesser-known wine region like Santa Barbara would still resonate little with audiences. And heading to Napa allowed the filmmakers to weave in some local landmarks. "You can't do a road trip in California without going over the Golden Gate Bridge," said Cellin Gluck, the new film's director.

But you can, it seems, remake "Sideways" without bashing merlot. The memorable rant by Paul Giamatti's Miles ("If anyone orders merlot, I'm leaving," he bellowed, before using some saltier language to express his hatred of the wine) is nowhere to be found.