Y ou know what they say: you wait all day for a comedy about an overweight mall cop, then two come along at once.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Observe and Report are just one example of a strange phenomenon whereby a film or TV show on a certain, often very specific, subject matter is closely followed by another.

Last week, The First, a new drama about an astronaut (Sean Penn) trying to become the first man on Mars, launched on Channel 4. It arrives as First Man plays in cinemas, Ryan Gosling taking on Neil Armstrong, and shortly after Missions, another Mars-centric series, aired on BBC Four. In September, meanwhile, Truth, about J Paul Getty, began on BBC Two – nine months after the film All the Money in the World, about the same man, came out.

For the purpose of this article, though, let's focus on “twin films”, which are found everywhere, from action blockbusters to high-brow biopics. When Winston Churchill films Darkest Hour and Churchill came out in the same year (along with the not unrelated Dunkirk), Churchill screenwriter Alex von Tunzelmann was surprised to find people believing there had been some sort of political conspiracy at play.

The White House was under attack in 'White House Down' and 'Olympus Has Fallen'

“I saw some people claiming this was something to do with Brexit,” she tells The Independent, “which it certainly wasn’t as far as I’m concerned because I was commissioned to write the screenplay in 2012 [before the referendum].”

I’m sure a few more pairings have already drifted into your mind as you read this, but – in case you’re in any doubt that “twin films” are indeed a thing – let’s run through some notable instances.

There’s Deep Impact and Armageddon (1998), both disaster movies about asteroids set to hit Earth, and Liberty Stands Still and Phone Booth (2002), thrillers where someone answers a ringing phone and is then pinned to the spot by a sniper on the other end of the line. Capote (2005) and Infamous (2006), both centring on the same Truman.

There’s 2007’s Ray Winstone-starring Beowulf and 2005’s Gerard Butler-starring Beowulf & Grendel. In 2006, there were two films about the same plane in the 9/11 attacks, United 93 and Flight 93. This year there is Utøya​– July 22 and 22 July, both on the 2011 massacre in Norway. There’s also Zodiac and The Zodiac, Coco Chanel and Coco Before Chanel, Jobs and Steve Jobs.

Two similarly plotted and often similarly titled films can cause confusion in viewers, and occasionally for film executives too. When screenwriter Douglas McGrath called him to announce that he had finished the screenplay for Infamous, producer Bingham Ray said, “I know, I’ve got it on my desk!” An awkward silence followed, as Ray realised he was looking at Dan Futterman’s script for the Philip Seymour Hoffman-starring Capote.

Brian Cox (left) and Gary Oldman (right) in ‘Churchill’ and ‘Darkest Hour’

Fun though it would be to believe that there’s some secret Hollywood society at work here, one obsessed with numerology and quietly lobbying for two of every film, the truth isn’t quite so neat. There is, in fact, a multitude of reasons for simultaneous releases, ranging from the prosaic (anniversaries) to the more sexy (industrial espionage).

Often, the clash is simply down to several screenwriters and producers reacting to the same event. Take the death of Steve Jobs, for instance. When the Apple co-founder took medical leave due to pancreatic cancer in 2011, Matt Whiteley began working on a screenplay that would become the Ashton Kutcher-starring biopic Jobs. At the same time, Steve Jobs himself asked author Walter Isaacson to write an authorised biography on him, for which Sony Pictures acquired the rights in October of that year, the same month Jobs passed away. The delay while the film is actually made might make movies feel less reactive by the time they open in cinemas, but often they were conceived on the very same day.

In some cases, twin films are the result of one project’s knowledge of the other. When Charlton Heston was chosen over Kirk Douglas to star in Ben-Hur, Douglas put his own Roman epic into production, optioning the Howard Fast novel Spartacus. It’s of course not only the actors who can pinch ideas. Staff are constantly moving between studios, scripts picked up by one studio will usually have already been shopped at others before it, and word of a new film usually reaches the Hollywood trade magazines very early on in their development.

In April 2012, The Hollywood Reporter covered what it called “the race to destroy the White House”. Development of Nu Image and Millennium’s Olympus Has Fallen was rudely interrupted by Columbia acquiring its own action thriller set at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, White House Down. Olympus Has Fallen ultimately beat White House Down to theatres by a couple of months, but both still managed to make a tidy profit.

Which recent movies will become classics? Show all 21 1 /21 Which recent movies will become classics? Which recent movies will become classics? Birdman - Undoubtedly Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s masterpiece will surely be remembered for years to come - fiercely original in its concept, brave in its single take(esque) format and the perfect satire of a very specific and bizarre era of cinema we find ourselves in. What perhaps was so astonishing about this Best Picture Oscar winner was that in spite of its experimental format and lofty intentions, it still also managed to be hugely entertaining, and is eminently rewatchable. - Christopher Hooton Fox Searchlight Pictures Which recent movies will become classics? There Will Be Blood - Potentially Inherent Vice feels like it’s been forgotten already, The Master was great but too weighty for some, but There Will Be Blood is the Paul Thomas Anderson film that comes up time and time again in pub film conversations, whether they’re between cinephiles or more casual fans. A blank yet brutal indictment of lucre, Daniel Day Lewis gave one of his best ever performances as oil man Daniel Plainview, and Jonny Greenwood’s fearsome score is still being performed live several years after its release. But mainly, “I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! I DRINK IT UP!” - CH Which recent movies will become classics? Avatar - Probably not It’s undeniable that James Cameron’s gargantuan blockbuster Avatar will find its place in the cinematic history books. With a worldwide gross of over 2.7 billion, it’s currently the highest earning film of all time - even Star Wars' The Force Awakens return couldn't topple it. But will it actually be remembered fondly? Its ground-breaking special effects already betray the first signs of aging, and though its use of 3D was revolutionary at the time, it’s now so pedestrian as to be found in a Glee concert movie. What is there to revere then? The patronising narrative re-hash of the plot to Dances With Wolves? Or the bit where two cat-aliens had sex by plugging their hair braids into each other? - Clarisse Loughrey Which recent movies will become classics? Whiplash - Within its own genre at least Whiplash was perhaps the most buzzy, "have you seen it yet?" film of 2014, and winning major Oscars off a budget of $3.3 million was no mean feat. Damien Chazelle managed to make a film about drumming absolutely edge-of-your-seat stuff, and succeeded by not patronising his audience - trusting that even if they didn’t understand the music theory detail, they would still be able to revel in it. Unfortunately, it might just be too small a film to be remembered as a ‘classic’, but will certainly be circling the top of ‘best movies about music’ lists for some years to come. - CH Which recent movies will become classics? Skyfall – Depends who’s Bond next Best Bond of all time? Skyfall’s slick, true, but its status as an icon seems heavily premature. We’re still clinging onto the Craig era, and it’s hard to argue that Skyfall doesn’t do the same; trading its entire dramatic tension on the premise that we’ve long been deeply attached to this grizzled Bond and equally grizzled M. In Silva’s personal vendetta, or in the neat metaphors of Skyfall Lodge’s crumbling exteriors and Bond’s crumbling interiors of a post-Vesper Lynd world; it’s only once the franchise has moved on to new pastures that we’ll truly start to see whether Skyfall can go the distance. Doesn’t help that Spectre was a bit of a disappointment, though. -CL Which recent movies will become classics? Mad Max: Fury Road - A gutsy yes Yes, it’s a madly confident move to already claim Fury Road’s going to a bonafide classic within its first year of release, but Fury Road is a mad movie. 36 years after its original incarnation, George Miller returned to the wasteland to conjure the greatest adrenaline hit of the cinematic decade. Breathlessly edited, hued with the colours of dust and dirt and rage; packed to the brim with practical stunt work unseen in the digital age. Plus, it’s a film that actively dismantles the patriarchy through a gun-slinging, metal-armed Charlize Theron. If it’s not remembered as one of the greatest blockbusters of its time, it’ll certainly be remembered as one of the gutsiest. - CL Which recent movies will become classics? The Great Beauty - No, but it damn well should be It won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2014, but this Paolo Sorrentino masterpiece is still unknown to most. It centres on a group of aging intellectuals partying on rooftops across Rome to Eurodance, and within this frame of superficiality it manages staggering profundity. The dialogue is rich, the cinematography sumptuous, and if Fellini is considered classic, this fellow Italian’s work certainly should be too. - CH Which recent movies will become classics? Little Miss Sunshine - Within its own genre, yes The ‘Sundance Effect’ has unfortunately developed a near plague of insufferable, self-conscious mawkishness over the years. Misfit boys finding new meaning to their existence in the arms of pink-haired manic pixie dream girls; sun-dappled bike rides as the latest band to feature a ukulele solo play softly in the distance. Some have indeed come off this false and cloying (Zach Braff’s Garden State), others smarter and keener (last year’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl); but as the fires of kook devour all in sight, there will always remain one film left standing in the ashes: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ Little Miss Sunshine. One scene that guarantees its elevation above the rabble sees teenager Dwayne (Paul Dano) realise he’s colour-blind, and thus will never be able to achieve his dream of becoming a jet fighter. Dano’s meltdown here is so raw, and so positively tragic, that it’ll be a hard job to ever forget that epic f-bomb as the years pass. - CL Which recent movies will become classics? Lost in Translation - I'll still be watching it in my 80s at least Really a perfect movie. The casting couldn't have been better and Sofia Coppola conveys the choking feeling of an overly air-conditioned hotel room like no-one else. So many of the shots were beautiful in their simplicity. Bill Murray making a nice crisp, clean golf shot before walking off down the course. The flower arranging scene. Bill lightly grabbing Scarlett Johansson's foot and this subtly serving as the film's 'kiss'. It's the unconventional romance at the heart of the film that makes it so great, though, which is as much about companionship as physical and emotional love. - CH Which recent movies will become classics? Crash - Hahahahahahahahaha Seriously, how did it win that Oscar? Even the director doesn't know. - CH Which recent movies will become classics? Pan’s Labyrinth - Absolutely Guillermo del Toro dreams on celluloid; he’s a weaver of fairy tales in an age where innocence is presumed dead. It’s through innocence, through innocent eyes, that we witness the darkest excesses of human nature in a way that so exposes the incomprehensibility of evil committed in the pursuit of power. Through young Ophelia’s perspective we watch the horrors of Franco’s Spanish regime play out, the barbaric cruelty of her stepfather Captain Vidal; she fears not the horned faun who lives in the labyrinth when it’s so clear her own patriarchal figurehead is the true monster. And though its finale may be heart-breaking, del Toro still allows innocence a certain victory. Victory through Ophelia’s eyes, those pure and hungry enough to see beyond the borders of her bleak reality to find an escape from the seemingly unstoppable monstrosities of adulthood. - CL Warner Bros. Which recent movies will become classics? I’m Still Here - When everyone realises its genius Initially admonished for being exploitative of Joaquin Phoenix’s ‘condition’, it was astonishing that, when this Casey Affleck-directed mockumentary was revealed to be a hoax, most critics didn’t give it a second review, and those who did still disliked it. In hindsight this was so much more than a prank. Phoenix stayed in character as a failed actor turned hip-hop artist for months on end. This dedication wasn’t for nothing either (unlikely say, DiCaprio in The Revenant), I’m Still Here is actually a very funny, moving and subtly satirical film, and definitely original. - CH Which recent movies will become classics? Boyhood - I doubt it While it too was an unprecedented piece of cinema, Boyhood for me faded from the memory very quickly. Dismissing this film as essentially a ‘puberty timelapse’ might be a little harsh, but the set-up did ultimately come off gimmicky and as a coming of age story it failed to resonate. Admirable, but not a ‘classic’ - CH Universal Pictures Which recent movies will become classics? The Social Network - Yes I was less than thrilled at the prospect of a movie about Facebook, but then pleasantly surprised upon watching it. A holy production trinity of David Fincher (director), Aaron Sorkin (screenwriter) and Trent Reznor (score) told a story that changed all of our lives with such panache. Texting, the internet, social media etc are so prosaic that many authors and filmmakers disingenuously leave them out of their stories, but here they were central and yet still the film was engrossing, stylish and human. - CH Which recent movies will become classics? Django Unchained - Hell yeah/hell maybe Swiping its titular character’s name from a 1966 Spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Corbucci, Tarantino utilised his trademark flair for ultra-violence and nihilistic humour to create the perfect meeting point between revisionism and classicism. Django channeled brutality in the name of righteous fury, allowing the freedom fighting slaves of a pre-Civil War Deep South their own legendary cowboy of the John Wayne or Clint Eastwood type. - CL Which recent movies will become classics? The Tree of Life - A few people will kid themselves it’s classic Terrence Malick’s experimental drama couldn’t really have been more ambitious or tried to chip away at a bigger chunk of existence. As such, it was automatically lauded by many who didn’t really know what to make of it, but looking back, was it worthy of the praise? The Brad-Pitt-is-a-family-man-in-the-50s plot strand was actually pretty unremarkable, and were it not for the brazenness of the extended shots of the universe being formed I doubt it would have made top ten lists the way it did. - CH Which recent movies will become classics? Her - Yes, as a historical document Films depicting the future remain fascinating decades later because they show, in retrospect, how we wanted the world to progress and what developments we simply couldn’t have conceived. As such Her will definitely still be getting talked about in years to come, whether or not we do indeed end up falling in love with our computers. (Also see: Ex Machina) - CH Which recent movies will become classics? Any of the space movies? Maybe Interstellar We seem to get a big budget space movie annually these days, and while none of them really have the creativity of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar stands a chance of staying atop VOD libraries. Gravity and The Martian, while technically brilliant, were pretty forgettable, and don’t get me started on Sunshine. Interstellar was very impressive though, and if a Christopher Nolan film’s going to stand out I’d rather it be this one than… - CH Which recent movies will become classics? Inception - Please no Yes, it’s insanely watchable and the plot zips along nicely, but seriously, can we stop pretending people falling backwards off chairs and out of camp, alpine sub-dream worlds amounts to anything more than an overly convoluted, albeit pretty, action movie? - CH Which recent movies will become classics? The Wolf of Wall Street - Not compared to Scorsese’s earlier work If there’s a burden of the artistic revolutionary, it’s that revolution is only ever momentary in its form; Martin Scorsese made his mark back in 1973 with Mean Streets, and it’s one that’s been difficult to paint over in the 43 years which have since passed. The Wolf of Wall Street faults itself only in being pure Scorsese; it’s a film which trades purely in the breathless, macho style already so entrenched in cinematic culture. Essentially, Scorsese’s own genre-defining genius has doomed to obscurity any latter work which dares to fold into the director’s own natural form of expression; it’s made derivative any work which doesn’t actively rebel against what he’s been most celebrated for. A tough reality, but a reality nonetheless. - CL Paramount Pictures Which recent movies will become classics? Nymphomaniac - Maybe if Part II hadn’t happened Even the truest of arthouse directors are culpable for the whims of Hollywood franchises. Yes, with his dual Nymphomaniac films, Lars von Trier managed to ruin the potential classic of his career by needlessly stretching his narrative across two films; churning out the NC-17 answer to Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy in the process. Strip Nymphomaniac of the controversy and media hysteria surrounding its use of pornographic actors in its sex scenes; and there’s a torn, throbbing soul at its centre. For all its salaciousness, von Trier’s exploration of the crippling effects of shame society burdens those, especially its women, who dare seek sexual pleasure is genuinely haunting. That’s in Part I, however; by the time Joe’s life story sees her grow from Stacy Martin into Charlotte Gainsbourg, von Trier’s epic dissolves into the bang of a drum in continuous, endless cycles. She’s horny and sad; we got it, Lars. - CL

Blockbusters Deep Impact and Armageddon didn’t suffer from their similar narratives in terms of box office sales either. The New Yorker wondered whether, when it came to Infamous and Capote, “a five-foot-three-inch writer from Monroeville, Alabama holds the same universal fascination as the end of the world”. He didn’t – while Capote was a hit, Infamous bombed, the 13 million dollar film taking just $2.6 million at the box office.

Two films coming up against each other isn’t always a bad thing though – something to race through production in order to avoid. Some films hope to benefit from the interest in their twin, and often smaller films will try to ride the coattails of larger ones. The straight-to-video HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds is a good example of this. Though it had a modest budget of $25 million, this paled in comparison to 132 million dollar Steven Spielberg vehicle, War of the Worlds. As the name suggests, the former film aimed to provide a version of the story more faithful to Wells’s novel.

Von Tunzelmann thinks it’s not twin films we should be surprised by, but rather that there aren’t more film triplets or quadruplets.

“I think it’s quite common for projects on the same subject to be developed at the same time because development can take years or decades,” she says. “At one point when we were developing Churchill, there were five or six Churchill projects in the offing. As it was, only two of them made it to the screen in the same year, Churchill and Darkest Hour. Some of the others may still be coming out.”

With more films and TV series being commissioned than ever, twin projects are likely to increase in both number and similarity. Only this year we saw Sink or Swim and Swimming with Men, the staggering case of two films about a man facing a midlife crisis who joins an all-male synchronised swimming team.

It's real-life figures that lead to the most twin films, though, and when Donald Trump's made-for-cinema presidency comes to an end at some point in the next six years, we can expect a potentially unprecedented number of duplicates.