Everyone can name a feature film that has become a successful series, things like: MASH or Naked City or Topper or Mr. Lucky, or the *Odd Couple *but what about those that didn’t succeed.
I can only remember a couple; things like Dirty Dancing, the Series and Animal House and I guess that golden monkey thing after Raiders of the Lost Ark came out and I vaguely remember a Barefoot in the Park tv series bombing, but I am not sure. (I’m not sure we can count the New Adventures of Indiana Jones as either a success or failure. I don’t think many people watched it but it was on for at least two seasons)
Can anyone else recall any big screen to small screen total failures?
Logan’s Run. Wasn’t a great movie to begin with, but was of interest. Turned into ‘post-apocalyptic civilization of the week’ lameness. The producers later admitted that they had no clue about science fiction whatsoever.
There may have been three animal House imitators, but only one – Delta House – featured actors from the original film, including D-Day and Dean Wormer. It also scored points by mentioning period icons like Ginsburg and Ferlinghetti.
Barefoot in the Park, like many shows on ABC, started life as a pilot on Love American Style. The pilot was good. Unfortunately, the series wasn’t. One huge mistake they made was to switch all the characters from white to black. Everyone may be equal, but the black experience and the white experience do differ, and this switch didn’t fool anyone. They also didn’t put th same effort into it. Worse, they remade the pilot episode with th new cast, so you could see how badly they were doing it. It bombed.
he Third Man was turned into a TV series. How? I don’t know – it was before my ime. They tried to ake a TV series out of Casablanca back in the fifties, too (there’s a episode on the enhanced Casablanca DVD). I can’ believe it was very good.
As I remember, The Third Man starring Michael Reaine (sp) was relatively successful lasting at least three seasons back when a season was a good length of time. Granted it had no similarity at all to the original movie other than the main character’s name. Basically it was what became the** Saint** which also had little or no resemblance to the original books or movies that preceeded it.
Just for the camp value alone, Buck Rogers In The 25th Century is worth a mention. Since it lasted a couple seasons, I suppose it couldn’t be considered a total failure though.
Weird Science was, IMHO, better as a TV series than as a movie. I liked both versions, but the series had some very clever parodies and Baby Boomer references scattered through it (most of which were, I suspect, wasted, since I’ve never met another middle-aged person who watched this show). Initially I thought Vanessa Angel was a pill, but she grew on me, and by the time the series ended, I loved her.
I loved that show!! I still have the episode where the manniquins get zapped to life and believe that they are pirates on tape. Much better than the movie. When are they going to release it on DVD?
The first 3 that came to my mind have all been said.
Seeing that we’ve recently had an ‘annoying music fan’ OP that evolved from an ‘annoying film fan’ thread, I’m just wondering the person who starts a ‘Small Screen to Big Screen Failures’ thread will do so prior to - of after, the release of Bewitched.
Weird Science was an alright show. When I saw the movie, I couldn’t believe I’d watched anything descended from that.
If we start including cartoons, this thread could probably run forever. I remember a while ago that there was a cartoon version of Disney’s Mighty Ducks. It had nothing to do with the original movies; it was about superhero anthropomorphic ducks and managed to work in hockey somehow. The mind boggles.
It was Tales of the Gold Monkey, and it more closely resembled the magnificent Howard Hawks film Only Angels Have Wings (both in characters and setting) than Raiders If anything, the other new action series from that year–Bring 'Em Back Alive–more closely resembled Indy in structure, even though the “character” Frank Buck dates back to the 30s.
