Sarah Michelle Gellar

"When I make movies, I make them for the original version, of course," Ichise said through a translator over drinks at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. "When remakes (become) big hits, it’s really great, but at the same time, I always want the original Japanese version to be seen by everyone."

While not all of Ichise’s Japanese originals have received exposure in the United States, studios have been quick to snap up Ichise’s plots, Westernize them and attach A-list talent in an attempt to give the widest possible audience a good scare. That’s recently happened to three of Ichise’s Japanese productions, all of which are scheduled to come out over the coming year in Westernized versions: Columbia Pictures’ "The Grudge" (Oct. 22), Disney’s "Dark Water" (Jan. 7) and DreamWorks’ "The Ring 2" (March 24).

Ichise has had the most involvement with "The Grudge," an Americanized retelling of his "Ju-on," which already has spawned two sequels in his native land. In fact, Ichise brought the franchise to Hollywood only to take it back home, where the new version was shot on location in and around Tokyo over eight weeks. The film, which stars Sarah Michelle Gellar (news), Jason Behr (news), Clea DuVall, Bill Pullman and William Mapother, was directed by the franchise’s creator Takashi Shimizu, with his partner, Ichise, serving as one of the producers.

"When I first started (producing this one), it was kind of awkward because I felt like I was doing a remake of something I’ve already done and it kind of got repetitive," Ichise admits. "But all the actors are from the U.S., the story was different, and we had a bigger budget so we got to make a different version. That was nice."

Ichise did have to adjust to dealing with Western actors, and the Screen Actors Guild (news - web sites)-mandated rules they work under. "We don’t have unions in Japan, so we can make the actors work all we want. But since these are all SAG actors, we couldn’t," he acknowledges. "It had nothing to do with them personally, but it was still kind of hard to deal with. But they were great."

The producer — who lists "Citizen Kane" and "Babe" as his favorite films — says adapting the story line to serve the interests of a new audience also was a daunting task. "The Japanese version was actually quite hard to understand, but Japanese audiences are used to those movies," he explains. "Americans don’t really deal with movies like that, so we wanted the story to be easier to understand. It’s really not who’s more advanced and who’s not. Background and environment makes people think differently."

Sam Raimi, who shepherded the "Grudge" redo through his genre label Ghost House Pictures, also contributed to the process. "One of the things I really liked about him is that he gave me and Shimizu a lot of freedom to work on this film," Ichise says. "This movie is unique — it’s a Japanese director, a Japanese producer and an American cast, and that’s the first time ever. It’s something people should really look forward to."