Here’s 4 Movies That Actually Became TV Shows, And Got Better in the Process
Movies are often looked at as being superior to television shows, but every decade that gap is shortening. As TV reaches bigger heights of prestige, high concepts and franchise ties often require shows to have movie-sized budgets. As such, TV has become a preferred destination for a lot of top creative talent, and sometimes, they manage to create TV adaptations that are far better than the film adaptations that preceded them.
Below we have four examples of TV series that have become so famous and iconic that they’ve all but eclipsed the movies that inspired them. It doesn’t mean the films were failures by any stretch (we’ll get to that), but if you were to ask most viewers which version they’d rather rewatch today… we’re fairly confident you’ll find the answers listed below.
4. Fargo
The Coen Brothers are filmmaking geniuses when it comes to telling small-town crime stories, and Fargo (1996) remains one of their more underrated works, even after winning two Oscars. The film follows an extortion caper gone horribly wrong when an overly ambitious car salesman named Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hires two thugs (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife and hold her for ransom. It was such a unique take on the detective Noir genre that no one expected it to become the focus of a TV adaptation, but that’s exactly what creator Noah Hawley (Alien: Earth, Legion) wanted to do.
The Fargo TV series has become one of the great cult-hit crime drama series of its time, earning upwards of 70 Emmy nominations (with 7 wins) and 14 Golden Globe nominations (3 wins). Structured in an anthology format, each of the 5 seasons is set in a different time period in Minnesota (2006, 1979, 2010, 1950, and 2019, respectively), offering a crime story that mimics the film’s beats of one small mistake or botched job spiraling into a bloody disaster. However, Noah Hawley is a TV auteur, and Fargo’s stories almost always veer into realms of sci-fi, mysticism, or other strange Twin Peaks-style occurrences. The fact that Hawley took on the Coens’ material and succeeded is impressive; the fact that he’s maintained that feat over five different stories is why the show has surpassed the film.
3. Westworld
Michael Crichton was one of the premier names in science fiction during the 1970s and 1980s, and Hollywood took the opportunity to turn his work into a string of hit movies. Westworld was a 1973 film that Crichton wrote and directed himself; it was made on an indie budget ($1.2 million) and earned a respectable $10 million at the box office. Like much of Crichton’s work, however, Westworld left a massive cultural imprint that solidified it as a cult hit. That includes a famous episode of The Simpsons, which kept the film alive for entire generations that never saw it.
When HBO announced a Westworld TV adaptation for 2016, few expected it to be more than the strange story of robots going wild in a futuristic theme park. No one was prepared for the depth and mind-screws of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s sci-fi-mystery-drama. Jona reminded everyone how instrumental he had been in writing movies with his brother, Chris Nolan, by crafting Westworld‘s first season into a non-linear mystery masterpiece that has not one, but at least three of the greatest TV twists of the last decade. And that was just in Season 1. Season 2 continued the mind-bending story of the first season, while Season 3 took a bold swing of bringing things into the real world, while Season 4 saw the entire dynamic reversed, with the robotic “hosts” conquering the world and enslaving humanity.
HBO’s Westworld is a bona fide sci-fi epic. It’s hard to look at the indie film as comparable in any way.
2. Hannibal
The work of Thomas Harris got mined by Hollywood to create hit films like Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Ridley Scott’s blockbuster sequel, Hannibal (2001). However, in the 2000s, the franchise stalled with a lackluster prequel, Hannibal Rising (2007), and an inferior remake of Manhunter, Red Dragon (2002).
Something was needed to revitalize the Thomas Harris universe, and that opportunity came when one of TV’s greatest high-concept creators (Heroes‘ Bryan Fuller) decided to put his stamp on the Hannibal Lecter saga. Hannibal the TV series ran for three seasons (2013-2015) and redefined network TV in the process. It was one of the most gruesome and terrifying shows to hit the airwaves, often generating massive shock over how it was able to do an R-rated serial killer horror film in a network TV format. But blood and gore weren’t the reasons that Hannibal surpassed all the previous adaptations of the character: The high-art manner in which Fuller treated horror, killing, criminal profiling, and crime investigation was revolutionary – as was the intense character drama (and “bromance”) between Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) and criminal profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy).
The show examines Graham and Lecter’s relationship starting before the events of Manhunter/Red Dragon, when they worked together profiling and tracking down deranged serial killers. Eventually, the series adapted all of Harris’s books (with the exception of The Silence of the Lambs), albeit in its own unique sequencing of events. Mikkelsen and Dancy ended up owning the roles of Lecter and Will Graham so completely that fans could finally let go of the previous performances. That’s a real feat when you’re talking about characters played by the likes of Sir Anthony Hopkins (Thor), Brian Cox (Succession), Ed Norton (The Incredible Hulk), and William Petersen (CSI). Hannibal is regarded as one of the best TV shows of the 21st century, and fans are still hoping it gets a revival.
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Joss Whedon (The Avengers) is a well-known filmmaker now, but before his days making history with Marvel Studios, or creating the sci-fi cult-hit series Firefly, he was learning a very painful (but ultimately career-changing) lesson about working in Hollywood. In the early 1990s, Whedon wrote a screenplay called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which took a stereotypical ’80s California mall girl type and made her the unlikely heroine of a supernatural horror/action story. The $7 million movie was released in 1992 and became a cult hit that is still relevant and celebrated today. However, Whedon felt 20th Century Fox hijacked his concept, and the final film wasn’t the femme-forward vision he had in mind. So he did something about it.
In 1997, Whedon relaunched Buffy as a TV series where he had control as creator and showrunner. The result was a much more modern and nuanced portrait of a ’90s girl who is handed the worldly responsibility of being a superhero and defending the world against supernatural forces. Whedon’s imagination proved to be fruitful, as his Buffy TV series spawned a much larger lore that eventually grew into an entire franchise universe that eclipsed the original film. Buffy actress Sarah Michelle Gellar became a generational star, and even supporting characters like David Boreanaz’s Angel got popular enough to step out into his own series. By now, Buffy has such a dedicated fandom and library of content that it’s a contender with other big fandoms like Marvel or DC. The planned revival series may have died in production this year, but the fact that it was even greenlit by Disney is a sign that there’s still life left in Buffy.
What other TV series do you think surpassed their movie inspirations? Let us know in the comments!
