Adaptations within the entertainment sphere are nothing new. In fact, some of the greatest films and TV shows begin as something else—whether it be a book, comic, Broadway musical, or even a Dungeons & Dragons game. So, it’s no surprise that, over the years, a select few movies have made their way from the big screen to the small screen, garnering their own adaptations into larger stories in a new medium. With Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith adaptation (which was inspired by the 2005 film of the same name) now out in the world, we thought it best to round up some other series that originally started as films before garnering success on television.
In this list, you may notice the absence of shows like Cobra Kai (spun-out from The Karate Kid films) or Watchmen (which was a film before becoming an HBO show), but we purposefully excluded series that either take place in the same universe as its original film (like spinoffs, sequels, and prequels) or pointedly went back to adapt just the source comic or novel rather than the films themselves.
Without further ado, here are our picks for the best film to TV adaptations, in no particular order:
What We Do in the Shadows
Original Film: What We Do in the Shadows (2014), directed by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement
Based on the vampire mockumentary from Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, What We Do in the Shadows brings the sadsack bloodsuckers Stateside. The Staten Island roommates—vampires Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry), and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), as well as Nandor’s servant, Guillermo (Harvey Guillen)—are all ridiculous and slightly pathetic. The handheld camerawork is the deadpan punchline, with every shaky zoom in on a character during a confessional implying, “Can you believe this weirdo?”
More of the humor comes from the macabre wordplay and deadpan goofiness—often thanks to Berry’s stark, blustery delivery, straight from his BAFTA-winning Toast of London, and the exasperated looks it draws from Demetriou and Guillen—which are then punctuated by violent slapstick, featuring gallons of blood. In bringing the vampire-out-of-water conceit’s mix of comic elements down to the granular level, What We Do in the Shadows harkens back to the strongest parts of the film, which thrived on its charming re-imagining of dopey mythical creatures failing through the world in a way very particular to Kiwi… or, now, Staten Island. And with its documentary-style taken just as seriously as its campy effects and extravagant costumes, the cretinous cosplay is beautifully straight-faced and completely winning—especially when the show goes to oxymoronic extremes of mundanity, like a city council meeting about zoning ordinances. —Jacob Oller
Snowpiercer
Original Film: Snowpiercer (2013), directed by Bong Joon-ho
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In the not-too-distant future, climate change has taken a turn for the worse, and scientists attempting to counteract the damage humanity has enacted upon our planet accidentally freeze the world instead. A supposedly forward-thinking “visionary” named Mr. Wilford predicts the coming disaster, and builds a train 1,001 cars long that will house all of Earth’s last remaining citizens, circling the globe without an end in sight. As is the case with society itself, the train is divided into various classes—first, second, third, and the tail—each defined by varying degrees of privilege and poverty. The series is adapted from both the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, published in 1982 and Oscar winner Bong Joon-Ho’s star-studded, big-screen action flick from 2013 (see: Chris Evans, Octavia Spencer, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-Ho).
In place of Bong’s Hollywood action hero Evans, the TV series enlists Hamilton star Daveed Diggs as Andre Layton, the reigning leader of the mistreated “tailies” section of the train. Instead of a more straightforward rebellion pushing Evans’ Curtis from the tail to the front of the train, the series takes advantage of its multi-chapter format to present a complex web of lies, false identities, and complicity.
Despite being canceled ahead of its time (with the final season still having yet to see the light of day), Snowpiercer is a poignant and chilling series that examines the best and worst of humanity, and ultimately showcases a post-apocalyptic future that doesn’t feel that far off. —Joyce Chen and Anna Govert
High Fidelity
Original Film: High Fidelity (2000), directed by Stephen Frears
There’s a moment in the first episode (“Top Five Heartbreaks”) of Hulu’s High Fidelity where Robin “Rob” Brooks (Zoe Kravitz, also an executive producer on the series), explains to the audience how most people think her Brooklyn-based record store, Championship Vinyl, is either a “relic” or simply a haven for hipsters. It’s an excellent point to be made in a story about a record store owner in 2020, one that couldn’t have really been made 20 years ago when the High Fidelity feature film came out, even when the film still acknowledged just how difficult it was to make a living off of a record store even then. At this point, it would be nigh impossible if not for the reboom of vinyl (and even audio cassettes now, to an extent), which is why it at least has to be addressed before the show goes on to spend a considerable amount of time inside its version of Championship Vinyl for the rest of the series’ nine episodes.
The other thing that seemingly needs to be addressed when discussing Hulu’s High Fidelity—a television adaptation of both the 1995 Nick Hornby novel and the blueprint-creating 2000 film starring John Cusack—is the fact that the music-loving, list-obsessed, romantic failure known as Rob Gordon in this story is a woman. An African-American, millennial, sexually fluid woman instead of a white, Gen Xer straight man. It’s that specific change that pretty much makes High Fidelity worth revisiting in a modern context, because not only does it open up the dating avenues and backstories a bit more—not only is one of Rob’s Top Five Heartbreaks in this version a woman, there’s no story about her breaking up with someone because they wouldn’t let her pressure them into sex—it acknowledges in a way how much a character like Cusack’s Rob couldn’t work today in the same presentation. The movie captured a very specific space and time, where a character like Rob made sense as the “alternative” romantic comedy lead (despite being played by anything but, in the form of John Cusack); it is a time capsule that the series rightfully doesn’t try to open or replicate, or worse, replace.
Most importantly, High Fidelity is enjoyable to watch, which makes the fact that Hulu’s originally released it all on Valentine’s Day an especially brilliant choice. The series is a love letter to its source material, to the music that plays throughout, to New York City (with a gentrification undercurrent within the season), and even to the rom-com genre. Despite not continuing beyond Season 1, this series still remains a wonderful and worthwhile watch. —LaToya Ferguson
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Original Film: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui
Buffy the Vampire Slayer had it all: Romance, drama, tragedy, suspense. The show took the teen-soap formula and elevated it to an art. It was a unique combination of tragic romance, apocalyptic fantasy and the clincher: emotional realism. It also featured the most serious and realistic depiction of human loss ever witnessed on the small screen (in “The Body” dealing with the death of Buffy’s mom by natural causes). Humor? The writers understood the campy sheen that must accompany any show named Buffy. They also knew how to use snappy dialogue and uncomfortable situations to full effect. Complex characters? You’d be hard pressed to find another program that had the same range and consistency of character development. Everyone matured (or devolved) at his or her own realistic rate. As some feminist writers have argued, TV had never before seen the complexity of relationships among women that you saw with the likes of Buffy, Willow, Joyce, and Dawn. Plot? The writers employed elaborate multi-episode, multi-season story arcs. People and events of the past always had a way of popping back up, the way they do in real life. Philosophy? Series creator Joss Whedon was all about the meta, the ideas and story behind the story. He succeeded, creating a WB/UPN show that bears closer resemblance to the works of Dostoevsky and Kafka than 90210 or Dawson’s Creek. —Tim Regan-Porter
