The made-in-Miami summer movie Rock of Ages, based on the jukebox Broadway musical ode to ’80s hair metal, could just as easily have been called Juke Box Hero after one of three Foreigner songs that figure in the production— the most of any act.

Foreigner’s lead singer Kelly Hansen, who replaced Lou Gramm, didn’t sing on the originals 30 years ago, but he’s still delighted the British-American classic rock band, which plays Thursday in Coconut Creek, still has such a high profile.

“I saw it on Broadway and had a great time,” Hansen, 50, said from his Los Angeles home. Hansen hasn’t seen the movie yet, but he says he’s gotten reports from the set. Some dish: Tom Cruise sings Foreigner’s classic ballad, I Want to Know What Love Is. Alec Baldwin tackles Juke Box Hero, and Julianne Hough duets with star Diego Boneta on Waiting for a Girl Like You.

Hansen, formerly of ’80s hard rock band Hurricane, has done his part to keep the old Foreigner songs alive, too. He joined in 2005, two years after Gramm left. Big shoes to fill, no doubt.

“I like to say I brought my own shoes,” Hansen said. The reality is that members, even lead singers, come and go, and bands soldier onward. “We’re not trying to be anybody else; we’re not trying to be a previous version . . . . We’re a forward moving entity, like a shark has to keep moving, or you die.”

In 2009 Foreigner released a new studio album, Can’t Slow Down. Hansen co-wrote with guitarist/founder Mick Jones, 67, the only original member remaining, and producer Marti Frederiksen. “I got to give Mick credit,” Hansen said. “For someone who has so many accolades to allow me to cowrite on those tunes was a big thing for me. Mick was very good at taking ideas and opinions, and he had strong opinions of his own. We would work through it.”

Still, much of Foreigner’s recent recorded output has been to cut new versions of old hits. Acoustique: The Classics Unplugged features 10 oldies redone acoustically. Juke Box Heroes offers new versions of the greatest hits purposely recorded to sound like the originals. A new package, Feels Like the First Time, gathers the two CDs with a Live in Chicago DVD. Acoustique is Hansen’s favorite in the set and with good reason: the stripped-down format showcases the sturdy melodies.

Juke Box Heroes follows a trend in which veteran rock acts like Kiss and Journey have gone into the studio to painstakingly recreate original recordings. The practice isn’t entirely new. Crooner Frank Sinatra did the same in the 1960s for his label, Reprise, so that he could own the licensing to material originally produced for Capitol a decade earlier.

Hansen will concede that there is a little of that at hand, but there was another motive.

“We want people to get a representation of what the band is now,” he said, acknowledging that there will always be those who will complain that this isn’t the original group. But change is not unusual with Foreigner, which saw the first of many lineup changes soon after its second album, Double Vision, in 1978.

“This is who we are, this is what we do, and let people make decisions.”

HOWARD COHEN

Foreigner performs at 8 p.m. Thursday at Seminole Coconut Creek Casino, 5555 NW 40th St., Coconut Creek. Tickets: $65-$55. Call 954-977-6700. For more pop culture, follow @HowardCohen on Twitter.