• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

tv shows with movies as episodes

S

skippercollector

I am wondering how many theatrical movies have been made that are actually episodes of their TV series. This question is NOT about TV series that have been remade as movies, and it's not for the "15 years later" reunion movies. This is what I have come up with:

Batman (1966)
The Man Called Flintstone (1967)
Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)
Munster, Go Home (1966)
The X Files (1998)

Some other suggestions, but there are a lot of these and perhaps someone else already has lists compiled: The Muppets, Star Trek, The Man from UNCLE, Peanuts.

The original Sept. 17, 1978, ABC pilot of Battlestar Galactica was 2 hours and 40 minutes long. A version was cut down to 2 hours and 20 minutes for theatrical release during the summer of 1978 in Canada and Europe, and it was released in the United States in May 1979. I can tell you a lot more about this, in fact I can tell you more than you ever wanted to know, but that is a different post.
 
I'm not sure if the cartoon movie "Hey There, It's Yogi Bear" (1964) counts here, but I'll mention it......At the time of the movie, no more Yogi episodes were bring made; but it was still riding high in syndication, with Kellogg's sponsorship. Yogi had his face on the cereal box of Kellogg's OK's cereal (a copy of Cheerios), but I'm not sure if he was still on the box at the time of the flick.

"The Flintstones" was also out of production before "The Man Called Flintstone" came out, if indeed the flick came out in '67.

cd
 
'The Adventures of Superman' had some theatrical releases of old episodes combined to feature-length stories(in addition to the 1949 Kirk Allyn serial being released theatrically).
There was a 'Dragnet' movie in 1954, which co-starred Richard Boone as the superior officer to Friday and Smith(Jack Webb and Ben Alexander). Boone's character's name was 'Jim Hamilton', which happened too be the name of an LAPD officer who served as the film's technical advisor. This is most likely the earliest instance of a released movie based on a TV show. One year earlier, an I Love Lucy film was test-screened in Bakersfield, CA, but when audiences panned it, Desi Arnaz decided to kill the project.

The movie essentially recycled three episodes from the first season, surrounded by a framing sequence about a young married couple(Benny Baker and Ann Doran) attending a filming of...'I Love Lucy'. Arnaz is shown, as himself, greeting the studio audience and welcoming them to the show, and the actual filmed episodes are weaved in to make it look like we're all watching the actors perform three episodes 'live' on a soundstage(with more framing scenes between 'shows'.)
This movie was never released, ostensibly because of studio politics; MGM felt that it would hurt the expected box office for another Lucy and Desi comedy vehicle(no pun intended)'The Long, Long Trailer'. (It's possible the test audience for the 'I Love Lucy' movie was not exactly overwhelmed by what was essentially an extended rerun of three episodes..even if reruns of the show would still have been something of a 'novelty' in 1953!)

I wonder if the ill-fated 'McHale's Navy' movies should count, since they were made after the series went out of production, messed with the show's format(set after WWII), and didn't even feature Ernest Borgnine?

The 'Peanuts' feature films technically don't count as 'extended episodes of a series', because the TV shows were specials; by the time there was a regular weekly TV series('The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show') in the '80s, no more theatrical films were being made.

'The Man From UNCLE' 'movie' was also cobbled together from actual episodes of the series, with some 'bonus' unused footage.

'The Man Called Flintstone' was made after production of the TV show had ended, but it was released in late summer of 1966, not '67.
So, it looks like, prior to '66, 'Dragnet' was the only TV show to spawn a movie which featured an original story, not just a reconstituted rerun.

Some American series of the '70s, such as 'The Six Million Dollar Man' and the already-mentioned 'Battlestar Galactica', had episodes released as feature films outside the US.
 
There was a "Dragnet" made for TV movie that was made in 1966 which was the pilot for the revival of the series, however for some reason wasn't broadcast until 1969 (so says Wikipedia, if they can be believed). Wonder why it went unshown for 3 years?

Mark
 
markwats said:
There was a "Dragnet" made for TV movie that was made in 1966 which was the pilot for the revival of the series, however for some reason wasn't broadcast until 1969 (so says Wikipedia, if they can be believed). Wonder why it went unshown for 3 years?

Mark
Click to expand...

The Wikipedia entry mentions the story involved a 'voyeuristic serial killer'(similar to the real life 'Lonely Hearts Killer', Harvey Glatman). Maybe some network execs were skittish about the plot; the eventual revival of the series focused less on action and 'major' crimes, and more on dialogue(and lecture)-driven police procedurals, so the pilot film didn't exactly fit that format.
By 1969, though, NBC must have figured that viewers were ready for a 'heavier' story.
 
onairb said:
By 1969, though, NBC must have figured that viewers were ready for a 'heavier' story.
Click to expand...

I dunno. I remember seeing the 1954 version (at a birthday party no less) which opened with a guy getting shot in the face with a shotgun. Pretty gruesome for a 50's movie.
 
landtuna said:
onairb said:
By 1969, though, NBC must have figured that viewers were ready for a 'heavier' story.
Click to expand...

I dunno. I remember seeing the 1954 version (at a birthday party no less) which opened with a guy getting shot in the face with a shotgun. Pretty gruesome for a 50's movie.
Click to expand...

That was a theatrical feature, whereas the 66/69 movie was made for NBC.
 
From '66 onward (and possibly before that) we were treated to scenes from Vietnam showing all manner of death and destruction every evening during dinner time so I would wonder why NBC thought a made-for-TV movie would be too tame to be shown.
 
The McHale's Navy movies happened during the show's run (1962-1966), the self-titled movie in 1964 and McHale's Navy Joins The Air Force in 1965.

Wasn't The Munsters still on the air on CBS when Munsters, Go Home was released in 1966? I know that Pat Priest was rejected by the producers of that movie because they thought she was "too old" for the role of Marilyn and she was 31 in 1966.
 
Braves2005 said:
The McHale's Navy movies happened during the show's run (1962-1966), the self-titled movie in 1964 and McHale's Navy Joins The Air Force in 1965.

Wasn't The Munsters still on the air on CBS when Munsters, Go Home was released in 1966? I know that Pat Priest was rejected by the producers of that movie because they thought she was "too old" for the role of Marilyn and she was 31 in 1966.
Click to expand...
It was in summer reruns, and either was about to be, or already had been, cancelled, when the movie was released (June, 1966).
 
The "Dr. Who and the Daleks" movie (and its sequel "Dalek Invasion Earth") starred Peter Cushing, who never appeared in the TV series, and instead of being a time-traveler from another planet, Cushing's Doctor was a human inventor.

Universal did cobble together many of its TV episodes for theatrical release in other countries. "Riding with Death," riffed on MST3K, was a couple of "Gemini Man" episodes stitched clumsily together, both with Jim Stafford as guest star. (They also rented out footage from their TV shows and movies to other producers; another MST3K episode featured "Space Mutiny," a cheap South African flick that used footage from "Battlestar Galactica" for most of its space scenes.)
 
^ Going with the above post, the classic TV series "Police Squad!" cobbled together episodes for the European market to make a full length movie out of it, as I understand.

Could we count "Ten from Your Show of Shows" in this thread?

cd
 
Ernest Borgnine did star in the first "McHale's Navy" movie, but was not in the second. I really want to see that second one as I only saw a bit of it on TV once, and it looked like good, wild slapstick...the kind I like.
 
Another way to approach the subject line of this post is to consider TV shows that featured real movies in the storyline. "Petticoat Junction" has an episode called "Wings" which revolved around the Pixley theater showing the late 1920s silent classic "Wings". Both stars of the original movie appeared in the episode.

I know that M.A.S.H. had clips from 20th Century Fox movies when the members of the 4077 were watching movies. What movies, I don't recall.
 
According to Wikipedia, The Man Called Flintstone was released on August 3, 1966 to theaters a few months after the TV show went out of production and is considered a "swan song" to the original Flintstones TV show. I kind of disagree on this since there has been many other Flintstones TV shows and movies since then.

The producers wanted to call the movie That Man Flintstone after the James Coburn movie Our Man Flint but for obvious reasons wanted to call it The Man Called Flintstone after The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
 
cd637299 said:
^ Going with the above post, the classic TV series "Police Squad!" cobbled together episodes for the European market to make a full length movie out of it, as I understand.
Click to expand...

It looks like the Naked Gun Movies should count as well.

EJM said:
"A Man Called Smart" was supposedly developed originally as a theatrical movie, but instead became the only three-part episode of the "Get Smart" series.
Click to expand...

There were also two Get Smart movies after the series ended, The Nude Bomb (Theatrical, with only Don Adams from the original cast) and Get Smart Again (Made for TV, but that would probably count as a reunion movie).
 
landtuna said:
From '66 onward (and possibly before that) we were treated to scenes from Vietnam showing all manner of death and destruction every evening during dinner time so I would wonder why NBC thought a made-for-TV movie would be too tame to be shown.
Click to expand...

It was only the year before when they came up with their absurd "no navel" rule regarding Barbara Eden, so the suits in charge were obviously paranoid about ANYTHING.
 
Braves2005 said:
According to Wikipedia, The Man Called Flintstone was released on August 3, 1966 to theaters a few months after the TV show went out of production and is considered a "swan song" to the original Flintstones TV show. I kind of disagree on this since there has been many other Flintstones TV shows and movies since then.

The producers wanted to call the movie That Man Flintstone after the James Coburn movie Our Man Flint but for obvious reasons wanted to call it The Man Called Flintstone after The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Click to expand...
It's a 'swan song' in the sense that it was the last time Pebbles and Bamm appeared as infants(they would either be teenagers or adults in subsequent cartoons), and the last time all of the voice artists from the original series cast-Alan Reed, Mel Blanc, Jean Vander Pyl, and Gerry Johnson-worked together(Gay Hartwig provided Betty's voice in the 1970s 'Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show', which did include the other original cast members).
 
johnbasalla said:
Another way to approach the subject line of this post is to consider TV shows that featured real movies in the storyline. "Petticoat Junction" has an episode called "Wings" which revolved around the Pixley theater showing the late 1920s silent classic "Wings". Both stars of the original movie appeared in the episode.

I know that M.A.S.H. had clips from 20th Century Fox movies when the members of the 4077 were watching movies. What movies, I don't recall.
Click to expand...

One episode had Hawkeye and BJ going out of their way to get a bootlegged copy of the 'scandalous' movie 'The Moon is Blue', only to be disappointed when they actually got to see it. Clips of the actual movie were shown in the episode.
 
And there was the episode where Col. Potter treated the camp to a showing of his favorite movie, "My Darling Clementine," but projector problems led Hawkeye et al. to come up with their own entertainment while the film was being repaired.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom