In
Hollywood, many foreign film productions (most of them from
Europe and the
Far East) are remade into U.S.-produced versions for American viewers - adapting the story to conform to American culture. Most of these "Americanized" versions are filmed in American places, and with English-speaking actors. Examples include
Godzilla,
Point of No Return (aka
Nikita),
My Father the Hero,
The Office,
The Ring and
House of Cards. In some cases, an original story from a foreign country is Americanized by recasting its lead characters as American; an example of this was the first adaptation of the
James Bond novel,
Casino Royale, which was produced for
CBS Television in 1954. In this version, the character of Bond — a
British agent in the original novel and subsequent movie series — is changed into an American agent for the TV version. Americanization is particularly common with the localization of
Japanese pop culture in the United States. An example of this is
Power Rangers, which uses an English speaking cast playing new characters and dubbing over stock footage from its original Japanese counterpart
Super Sentai. Other examples include
dub localizations of
anime as well as
video game localizations. ==See also==