Life imitates art. Auto-remaking <i>Irma Vep</i> in the new media culture of convergence

Abstract This article examines the impact of the convergent culture of the digital age on authorship through the case study of Olivier Assayas’s auto-remake, the miniseries Irma Vep, based on his own earlier French film of the same title. To do so, it explores the interactions between auteur theory—which defines the director as the central creator of a work—and the theoretical framework of convergence culture, which emphasizes the intermedial dialogue of media content. The argument put forth is that, by their very nature, auto-remakes foreground the real-life figure of the auteur as a person in the interpretive process, while the authorial function itself becomes secondary and fragmented through adaptation to new contexts. This results in a plurality of meanings and a multiplication of interpretative possibilities. In this way, the convergent cultural space acts as a catalyst, transforming the authorial function into an editorial function—a shift that Irma Vep models through its self-reflexive narrative: the fractured figure of the director, the deconstruction of traditional narrative structures, and the revision of meaning-making content.