Movies that would make good TV shows

[DaCosta]

Turning movies into TV shows has become more common lately, with entries such as Ash vs. Evil Dead, 12 Monkeys, Bates Motel, Lethal Weapon, Time After Time and Westworld.

Instead of complaining like a sourpuss about everything ("Hollywood is out of ideas!", "How dare they sully the legacy of the Transporter franchise?!", you get the point), and assuming the end product is possible to be good, and maybe even an improvement on the source material (If you ask me Westworld was a 1000 times better than the movie), I ask you this:

Which movies would make for good TV shows?

I vote for The Warriors. The movie is alright, but nothing special in terms of plot and characters. What really sets it apart in my mind is the crazy and colorful world it created. There's a gang of mute, ominous baseball players, another is a gang of mimes, etc. The plot does allow for all the gangs to be showcased in quick succession within the short time frame of the movie, but I would have enjoyed spending more time with each of them.

I am partly influenced in this by The Warriors videogame for PS2 made by Rockstar, which did have a mission based, sort of episodic structure, and showed me how interesting it could be to just watch the gang go up againt the Van Courtland Rangers, or Baseball Furies, or Soho Hi-Hats, in small individual adventures.

 

[Hawki]

This isn't exactly a new phenomenon. It's not that rare for TV shows to stem from movies, and in some cases, eclipse the movies they're based on (e.g. Stargate). But that said, I'll nominate some:

-The Matrix: The very concept of the Matrix is a playground for ideas, and the Animatrix and comics took them up - little stories that the setting allows for. Now, granted, it would be very expensive to produce, but you could easily have a TV series that takes place prior to the first movie. Action and drama in both the Matrix and real world.

-Zootopia: There's a long-established precedent with Disney taking its properties and making TV series out of them - Aladdin, Lion King, Tangled, etc. Zootopia is another example where you could tell short stories in the setting, even drawing parallels to the going-ons in the real world. Come to think of it, Wreck-it Ralph would be well suited for this as well.

-Sing/Secret Life of Pets: Well, you could make a cartoon out of these properties if you wanted to. I liked Sing (not so much SLoP), and while I'm not exactly clamouring for either of these, I'd sooner have these properties than Minions.

It's also at this point that I realize that I'm running out of ideas, because most movies have either been based on something already, or already made the transition to TV.

-Reign of Fire: Go Walking Dead, but with dragons! As in, keep the focus on human drama and human conflict, but throw in dragons instead of walkers.
...yeah, probably not going to work, let alone happen.

-Chronicles of Riddick: Okay, I guess it could work, but I've only seen the first movie, so I can't really say if the setting's that well defined for a TV series. Or, maybe the lack of definition could help a TV series's cause?

-The Incredibles: Not fond of the film, and I don't know what would distinguish it between any other superhero cartoon, but, well, go wild.

 

[DaCosta]

This isn't exactly a new phenomenon.

That's why I said it's becoming more common. Between Limitless, Time After Time, Fargo, Rush Hour, Lethal Weapon, Ash vs Evil Dead, Bates Motel, From Dusk Till Dawn, Damien, Minority Report, Training Day, Taken, Wet Hot American Summer, 12 Monkeys, Bad Teacher, Scream, School of Rock, Transporter, Westworld, and possibly more, all coming out in the last 2 or 3 years, I think it is safe to say we're in the middle of a trend.

 

[Chanticoblues]

After Life.

It's a Japanese film by Hirokazu Koreeda about service workers in a kind of purgatory before heaven. Heaven is actually just a memory of your choosing from your life that you relive for eternity, and these workers stage and film the memory so you can take it with you. It's a pretty rich setting and concept, and it's used really well, but I think it naturally allows itself to more possibilities than a feature film can cover.

 

[Zontar]

Stargate... oh wait.

Dredd... oh wait.

The Avengers... oh wait.

Daredevil... oh wait.

Punisher... oh wait.

Galaxy Quest... oh wait.

On a serious note, most movies that are based on books that aren't romance stories work better on the small screen because you have time to actually cover the entire story instead of just a tiny part of it (or much more of it anyway, given that even many books are too much for a 10-13 hour small screen adaptation).

 

[WolfThomas]

The Watchmen would have fared better as an episodic series I think.

 

[09philj]

Any of the films based on Alan Moore IP in general.

 

[Trunkage]

After Life.

When I saw After Life, immediately though of Andrew Lincoln... the good show Medium ripped off.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Pacific Rim, a CGI prequel series in the vein of the underrated 'Roughnecks' for Starship Troopers.

Interestingly, the movie indicates that there was a time before it took place when the Jaegers held such an overwhelming tech advantage over Kaiju that some people treated it as a game. Logically, this means there would have been people lacking the mental toughness of soldiers taking on the job for other reasons (celebrities seeking publicity, mercenaries, freelance engineers...). I'd like to see a series where a crew of such unqualified misfit pilots have to adjust to a life-and-death mentality when the invading Kaiju start to suddenly become far more dangerous.

Book series instead of movie, but I always felt the Animorphs TV series didn't do the books justice due to a low SFX budget. Instead, I'd like to see an anime series of it.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

World War Z should absolutly have been a TV show.

 

[Remus]

Dark City. Stretch the mystery out longer, make the strangers a bit more menacing. This could work over a 3-season arc with episodes about people going insane after waking up during the change or the strangers ramping up efforts to reign in Murdock or other humans that learned how to tune.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I think the Harry Potter films would had been better if it was a TV series like a HBO show or something. Yes I know they would of still left out some minor details like they did with GOT but still.

 

[maninahat]

The Count of Monte Cristo should never be made into a movie, and should always be adapted to television. As a movie, it only has enough time to be a fairly standard revenge movie with a 19th Century theme. It works better as an elaborate story in which the revenge is carried out through an absurdly convoluted process.

Also, Adele Blanc Sec made for an okay movie, but it has way too many characters and story threads to introduce from the comics, and it needed something like a Tintin serial (but for adults) to go through all the stories.

 

[DaCosta]

The Count of Monte Cristo should never be made into a movie, and should always be adapted to television. As a movie, it only has enough time to be a fairly standard revenge movie with a 19th Century theme. It works better as an elaborate story in which the revenge is carried out through an absurdly convoluted process.

100% agree.

Have you watched the 4 episodes long, at 90-minute each, french miniseries? It might be my favorite version.

How about the Gankutsuou anime? It's from Albert's point of view sure, and has more of a sci-fi setting, but outward trappings aside, in certain other ways it might actually be one of the more faithful adaptations.

 

[pookie101]

Dark City. Stretch the mystery out longer, make the strangers a bit more menacing. This could work over a 3-season arc with episodes about people going insane after waking up during the change or the strangers ramping up efforts to reign in Murdock or other humans that learned how to tune.

oh i like your idea.. someone should give you a production company to make it happen

 

[kitsunefather]

I've got two words for everyone that will change everything on this subject:

Theodore Rex.

Do it like Law & Order; an episodic police procedural, but with elements of Police Squad where it takes everything straight faced, but fill the world with absolute absurdity (like that all dinos are psychic, or butterflies that are bombs; you know, like in the movie).

 

[Souplex]

Not a movie, but a webcomic that would make an amazing TV show:
Erfworld.
http://www.erfworld.com/
read it.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I always thought Ponyo would make for a wonderful little kids' animated show with like 5 to 10 minute episodes. Since Ponyo is the fish out of water (quite literally, ho ho ho!) they could make it educational and have the audience learning with Ponyo about things like music, technology and different countries.

Fuck it, make Kiki's Delivery Service into a series too. The whole setup is just tailor made for individual adventures she encounters in her work, with the movie serving as a prequel. Oh, and have a crossover with Little Witch Academia!!!!

Any of the films based on Alan Moore IP in general.

V for Vendetta first and foremost. The movie and the series would complement each other perfectly, with one providing the action, the excitement and the intrigue, and the other having the nuance, complexity, moral ambiguity and character drama.

 

[Kyrian007]

Ooh, my decades old pitch for "The Further Adventures of Hudson Hawk." Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello singing and dancing their way through a new cat burglary every week...

Actually, it makes a little sense. If you adapt a good movie for television, the comparison is going to seriously hurt you. Adapt a great movie and you really haven't got a chance. But adapt a terrible movie... Like, the CW's Arrowverse. The shows are ok. At times fairly good. But compare them to the current movie version of DC... and they look brilliant by comparison.

So pick a terrible movie and adapt it for television. An entertaining terrible movie might make for really fun TV.

Like 1992's Split Second starring Rutger Hauer and Kim Cattrall. A fastidious nerd and a caffeine and sugar fueled gun-freak team up to take on a body horror mixture of a xenomorph and the Zodiac killer. It's got built in product placement with energy drinks, post-apocalypse is kind of in right now, and it can really double down on the self-aware parody of "grim and gritty" seeing how really childish and teenage the whole "grimdark" thing seems now by comparison.

Or, a personal favorite of mine... a pitch for "More Southland Tales." This could be awesome. An anthology series that ends every episode with the world coming to an end. And has at least one song and dance number every couple of episodes. An anthology of multiverse worlds coming to an end, always the fault of several people connected in each of the respective doomed earths.