Make a copy, pass it on: The Ring Two and the Ghost of Verbinski

As a Hollywood production helmed by Japanese director Hideo Nakata, The Ring Two upsets categories like remake and sequel. Running below the sinuous narrative and generic entanglements of adaptation, translation, and sequelization is a pattern of shifting authorship. By analyzing the discourse of authorship in industrial texts such as trade journals, newspaper articles, press kits, and DVD featurettes, this article argues that the logic of shifting authorship reflects Hollywood's flexible accumulation of international content and labor. The fetish of the original, discussed and reinterpreted continuously in each subsequent installment of the Ringu/Ring franchise, becomes the basis for self-mythologizing and justification for Hollywood's new international division of cultural labor. Under these circumstances, Nakata's auteur status serves as (multi)cultural capital, while his labor serves to ventriloquize Hollywood horror conventions and the style of director Gore Verbinski, whose presence continues to haunt the franchise as it is further passed along.