I just got hold of a copy of "La Settima Donna" by Roberto Pregadio, and the 3rd track on the CD "La Spogliarello" is basically "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer.
I remember thinking that "You Don't Care" by Cricket (Aurelio Grimaldi / Fabio Frizzi) (from "Amanti Miei") was pretty much "Le Freak" by Chic (though it's also close to the theme from "Manaos", credited to Fabio Frizzi, which sounds less like "Le Freak").
I'm guessing this probably happened because the films were temp-tracked and the composers were told to keep very close to the music used to do that. What do I know, though? Does anyone know any more about why this happens? Do you have really notable examples you'd like to share? I find it really jarring when it happens to the degree it does in the examples above. Apologies if this idea has been done to death (I did search a bit).
Could be that they didn't want to pay for the use of the song and decided to just copy it (probably cheaper).
Another example is 'Ty's Decision' from the "Armored" score by John Murphy. That's basically a reworking of Massive Attack's 'Angel'
That's a good one. I don't know Massive Attack, but thanks for putting a link in so I could hear it. I'll do the same for mine, as I hadn't thought of that.