I’ve been watching a lot of old TV shows on Retro TV, and it seems to me that many of them could be made into good movies.Take the following shows:
_Naked City
-Route 66
-THe Saint
They all had pretty good plots, and they are recent enough that plenty of “baby boomers” might be interested.
Seems like a better idea than these endless remakes that Hollywood seems to have fixated upon.
The made one about The Saint with Val Kilmer. Dunno how well it did, though.
There were Saint movies.
I think.
I don’t care how much y’all’s opinion of me lowers because of this, but I’m gonna say it anyway:
F Troop
I wanna see an F Troop movie and I wanna see it ogd@mn soon. I loved that show, I own the DVD sets, I re-watch them frequently. I admit it’s not always great, but I loved that show when I was a kid, I loved it as a teenager, I loved it as a young adult, and now, as I crest the hill that is middle age, and find myself sliding relentlessly to decrepitude, I still love that show. Ah, O’Rourke, you were a sly old tom cat, weren’t you?
The Saint was made a few years back with IIRC Val Kilmer in it.
The Avengers was made a few years back with Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman
The Green Hornetwas just made with Seth Rogan
Naked City has not yet been turned into a movie
Route 66 has not yet been made into a movie, though there was an amusing Route 666.
“Naked City” was originally a 1948 film (based on a book) so making it into a film would be full circle.The Naked City - Wikipedia
I am surprised it hasn’t been done more often but it seems it’s the comedies (Addams Family, Bewitched, Beverly Hillbillies) that get made into films. Probably because those do better in syndication
as those audiences want something that isn’t too demanding to follow.
Of course “Star Trek” is a massive exception but even that had its humorous bantering.
They call it “Dances With Wolves”.
The Fugitive.
The Brady Bunch movies worked in part by mocking the era that had spawned them.
Admittedly, that show was at the tail end of the sixties.
Wins the thread.
They’re making a new Avengers movie, only this one has all these superheroes and stuff in it! Boy, they didn’t understand the TV show at all!
I am surprised there hasn’t been an I Dream of Jeannie movie. And I wish they had done a proper Bewitched movie instead of that nonsense they made with Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman. In fact, in this climate of remakes and the popularity of genre fantasy on TV, they’d be ripe for a dark or modern retelling.
Beat to the punch.
Spy magazine ran a comparison ca. 1991:
*Dances with Wolves: *LT Dunbar encounters the Sioux, who are peaceloving and friendly
*F Troop: *Capt Parmenter encounters the Hakawi, who are peaceloving and friendly… and a laff riot
Starring Johnny Knoxville!
They’re coming out with a Mr. Ed movie. With Jim Carrey. Woe…
Despite how old it makes everyone feel, I’m not sure we can called the 90’s “a few years back” anymore.
I Dream of Jeannie was based on a movie called The Brass Bottle starring Burl Ives and Barbara Eden.
Bewitched was pretty much based on I Married a Witch with Fredric March and Veronica Lake.
The Dark Shadows movie starring Johnny Depp will be out soon.
Russell Crowe has made noises in the past about a film version of Hogan’s Heroes; accounts vary as to whether he would play Hogan or Newkirk.
About The Saint : This was actually a series of books long before it was a TV series. Any future movie would be based on the books, rather than the 60’s TV series.
The 60’s series was actually pretty awful, BTW, and totally missed the point of the original. Even the Val Kilmer travesty was closer to the books.
I’ll apologize in advance to anyone who loves those old shows (I have plenty of old favorites too), but the fact is the vast majority of everything that used to be on TV back in the day was SHIT.
The only reason anybody watched any of that crap was because there were only 3 channels and you didn’t really have any choice. They don’t stand up to the test of time; this is why when they attempt to update them for a modern audience they put out SHIT. This is why The Avengers was shit. This is why Bewitched was shit. This is why The A-Team was shit. This is why The Green Hornet, Dragnet, Wild Wild West, and Land of the Lost were shit. The Brady Bunch movies? Shit. Charlies Angels? Shit. The Mod Squad, My Favorite Martian, Scooby Doo, Starsky and Hutch, Transformers, all completely meritless SHIT. This is why when they try to revive Knight Rider, The Love Boat, and Bionic Woman they all failed miserably because the original show was SHIT.
Granted, there are some that worked, some to great effect, like The Fugitive, Mission: Impossible, and I don’t know …possibly The Addams Family. My point is, the hits are extremely rare, and the misses are both numerous and spectacularly bad.