Something very similar happened to Angel’s Egg/Tenshi no Tomago. This slow, meandering, beautiful existential art film about how hopeless it is to be alive. (Like, the only real talking in the story is a telling of the Noah’s Ark story where God leaves and the bird doesn’t come back)

It’s probably one of the best films ever made - as profound as anything by Tarkovsky.

So of course an American director cut it with random bits of live action, dubbed some dialogue in, and made it a shitty post apocalyptic movie.