Successful film remakes can become truly transnational phenomena, reaching across and beyond East Asia. This chapter explores the diverse and continued remaking of the ‘Miss Granny’ story, from its first iteration in South Korea to the multiple versions across East and Southeast Asia. The ‘Miss Granny’ story began as Suspicious Girl (Susanghan geunyeo, 2014), a romantic comedy, directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, in which a difficult elderly woman struggling with her family relationships finds herself transported by a magic photobooth back into her twenty-year-old body, while retaining her knowledge and memories in the contemporary setting. After generating high box-office earnings of $51.7 million USD and significant critical acclaim, the story was quickly retold for Chinese-speaking audiences as 20 Once Again (Chóng fǎn èrshí suì, 2015), directed by Leste Chan; for Vietnamese audiences as Sweet 20, aka You Are My Grandmother (Em là bà nội của anh, 2015), directed by Phan Gia Nhat Linh; and for Japanese audiences as Suspicious Girl, aka Sing My Life (Ayashii Kanojo, 2016), directed by Mizuta Nobuo. Spreading further, a Thai remake titled Suddenly Twenty (Suddenly 20, Araya Suriharn, 2016), an Indonesian remake titled Sweet Twenty (Sweet 20, Ody C. Harahap, 2017), a Philippine remake titled Miss Granny (Joyce E. Bernal, 2018) and a Telugulanguage Indian version titled Oh Baby! (B. V. Nandini Reddy, 2019) are also part of this transnational phenomenon. The South Korean version's box-office success overtook that of Frozen (Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, 2013), while the Chinese adaptation grossed $57.4 million and the Vietnamese version was the highest-grossing domestic film in Vietnam at the time of its release.

An examination of these ‘Miss Granny’ films, which have become a remarkable global phenomenon, is timely for many reasons. First, the director of the original, Hwang Dong-hyuk, has recently achieved global fame via his Netflix show Squid Game (Ojingeo Geim, 2021), and audiences who had not previously watched his earlier films such as My Father (Mai Padeo, 2007), Silenced (a.k.a The Crucible, Dogani, 2011) and The Fortress (Namhan sanseong, 2017) are now discovering them.