MGM is changing the villains in its Red Dawn remake from Chinese to North Korean to keep friendly with the rising Asian superpower, including its lucrative box office for American movies.

Filmed in 2009, Red Dawn centers on a World War III type invasion onto American soil of a foreign country. The original pitted the U.S. against the Soviets, the remake filmed the invaders as the Chinese.

"We were initially very reluctant to make any changes," said Tripp Vinson, one of the movie's producers. "But after careful consideration we constructed a way to make a scarier, smarter and more dangerous Red Dawn that we believe improves the movie."

"The filmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from Red Dawn, substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake."

"For less than $1 million [the studio can change] an opening sequence summarizing the story's fictional backdrop, and re-edit two scenes using digital technology to transform many Chinese symbols to Korean...[giving] North Korea a much larger role in the coalition that invades the U.S.