Top 10 TV-to-movie adaptations
Get Smart, Batman, Sex and the City - the cinemas are full of movies which were inspired by the small screen.
We asked you to name your favourite flick which began life as a TV show and, along with the votes from the tvnz.co.nz crew here, we have compiled the top 10 TV-to-film adaptations.
Some big movies which failed to garner any interest include Scooby Doo, Lost in Space or Miami Vice - but they were all pretty rubbish so it's no real surprise. Also no shock that Bewitched and The Beverley Hillbillies also disappeared without a trace.
Spongbob Squarepants has some fans, as does Serenity, the big screen version of the short-lived sci-fi series Firefly, but they just miss out on the top 10, as does The X Files movie, the X-Men trilogy, The Simpsons and any of the Muppets movies. And the lack of showing for the South Park movie is a personal disappointment (one of the funniest films ever made!!!)
So who made the list? The answers are below. If you agree with our list or think your favourite was left out then use the message board below.
Warring robots Optimus Prime and Megatron kick off the countdown
with the last year's big budget Transformers remake.
Starting life as an animated series back in 1984, the TV show
was an instant worldwide smash, inspiring a generation of kids:
'Transformers...robots in disguise'.
Despite a big screen animated outing in 1986 (the last film role
for Orson Welles) the series was confined to comic book fans over
the resulting years. It took
uber-explosion director
Michael Bay
to resurrect the Transformers last year to
huge critical and commercial acclaim. Stand by for the sequel next
year.
One of the most successful films ever to originate from a TV
show skit, Wayne's World continues to inspire many a head banging
sequence any time Bohemian Rhapsody is played.
Mike Myers and Dana Carvey starred as dumb rockers Wayne and Garth
on American sketch show Saturday Night Live before graduating to
the big screen in 1992. The film was a huge hit and for a
brief moment the world was full of catch-phrases "Swiing!", "Party
On" and "Not". Thankfully the world came to its senses soon
after.
A disappointing sequel followed but it didn't stop Myers from
becoming one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, as for
Carvey....
Harrison Ford + Tommy Lee Jones + a director at the top of his
game = one giant sized hit.
Ford has rarely been better in his 'underdog role' as the innocent
Dr Richard Kimble trying to prove he did not kill his wife while
being chased down by US Marshall Jones.
Andrew Davis directed the taut action and Jones went on to win a
Best Supporting Actor Oscar, a rare acknowledgment for an action
flick, while the movie was also nominated for Best Film.
The 1993 adaptation stuck closely to the spirit of the original
series, which ran from 1963-1967.
7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Much like Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were a
1980's pop culture phenomena.
Images of Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo were
everywhere after the original TV series was launched back in
1987.
Starting life as a comic book three years earlier, the tales of the
pizza-loving kick-ass Turtles did not take long to reach the
cinemas and in 1990 the first of three live action big screen
outings for TMNT was released.
The series looked to be over after the third movie in 1993 but in
the usual tradition of Hollywood recycling, the Turtles made a
successful comeback in computer-generated form in 2007.
The irresistible theme tune, a big budget, a slightly
incomprehensible plot and a pre-sofa jumping Tom Cruise helped turn
Mission Impossible into a worldwide smash back in 1996.
The TV series, starring the formidable Peter Graves as the head of
the Impossible Missions Force, ran from 1966 to 1973.
The movie, directed by Brian De Palma, kept some of the iconic
features of the TV series (exploding message tapes) but focussed on
Cruise's Ethan Hunt character after his team is wiped out
early on.
Two more films followed with a fourth rumoured to be in the
works.
He may have smashed the US box office with The Dark Knight, and
no doubt in years to come that film will feature highly on many
similar countdowns as this, but for the moment Tim Burton's
original Batman is the daddy of the comic book outings.
Burton had to walk the tightrope of updating the campy classic of
the 1960s TV series while making it palatable for modern audiences.
Choosing an unlikely leading man in Michael Keaton (only after Mel
Gibson turned down the role), he pitted the hero Bruce Wayne
against a maniacal Joker, played with glee by Jack Nicolson.
You couldn't miss the movie back in 1989 as it had one of the
biggest marketing budgets ever at the time of release and no doubt
kick-started the rush of superheroes invading cinemas.
'Good morning Charlie' - the world said hello to the Angels once
again back in 2000 as Drew Barrymore, Lucy Lui and Cameron Diaz
played the trio of crime fighters who displayed an array of
ever-decreasing clothing.
The TV series ran from 1976 to 1981 and was a huge worldwide hit,
making stars of the original Angels - Kate Jackson, Farah
Fawcett-Majors and Jaclyn Smith.
Barrymore then brought the concept to the big screen with director
McG on board the ride.
The movie was beset by tales of in-fighting, all of which were
denied, and the ladies reunited for a less successful sequel - Full
Throttle.
3. The Brady Bunch
A number three spot is a really good showing for a movie which
took the original TV series and turned the concept on its
head.
Certainly expectations were low for a movie which featured the
all-American family and their mild comedic ways.
But placing the 1970s family smack bang into a 1990s setting was
ingenious by director Betty Thomas and writer Sherwood
Schwartz.
The innocence of the family clashing with a modern world was a
delight and the cast, including Shelley Long and Gary Cole as the
parents, revelled in their roles. An inferior sequel and TV movie
followed but if you haven't seen it already, rent this movie if you
can.
2. The Addams Family
The world was snapping its fingers when in 1991; director Barry
Sonnenfeld brought The Addams Family to the big screen.
The perfect casting of Raul Julia as Gomez, Angelica Huston as
Morticia, Christopher Lloyd as Fester and a young Christina Ricci
as Wednesday helped propel the movie to box office success, no mean
feat considering
MC Hammer did the theme
tune!
Sonnenfeld retained the dark humour of the original comic strip by
Charles Addams while maintaining some of the campy fun of the 1960s
TV series.
Arguably the follow up, Addams Family Values, is a rarity in
Hollywood - a sequel which is even better than the original
especially when Wednesday and her brother Pugsley are sent to
summer camp.
1. Star Trek
And so to our number one and a clear winner, although some may
claim it's a cheat. Our voters did not pick one particular Star
Trek movie as the favourite, just the movie series as a
whole.
But certainly the success and impact of a little show which ran for
79 episodes between 1966 and 1969 cannot be underestimated.
The history of the TV show is well known - first show to feature a
prominent black character, first inter-racial kiss on American TV,
whatever you do don't wear a red shirt when beaming down to a
planet (death comes quickly!) - the show struggled to gain fans and
was canned due to low ratings.
But it lived on in syndication and soon the adventures of Captain
Kirk, Spock and crew snowballed into popular culture.
Creator Gene Roddenberry eventually got the first of the Star Trek
movies green lit in 1979, thanks in part to the success of Star
Wars, and that spawned a host of good and indifferent sequels until
the failure of Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002 seemed to bring the big
screen adaptations to an end.
But any fears Star Trek would fade from culture were allayed when
Lost maestro producer JJ
Abrams
announced he was going to direct a new version
- the 11th in the series, featuring a younger version of the cast
of the original series, including New Zealand's own Karl Urban as
McCoy.
The movie comes out in the US
next May .
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