The 10 worst TV to movie adaptations
The movie industry’s refusal to allow any intellectual property with inbuilt name value to go to waste has seen the big screen become a haven for adaptations, virtually any noteworthy brand to have made even the slightest dent in the pop culture sphere.
Whether it’s comic books, novels, video games, toy lines, or TV shows, original cinema has fought an uphill battle against a deluge of ready-made brands seeking to capitalise on their awareness among audiences to launch the next money-spinning franchise.
Of course, there are plenty of titles hailing from the aforementioned mediums to have proven their worth and justified their existence, but there are just as many to have fallen alarmingly flat. Bringing small screen favourites to cinemas has worked wonders for Mission: Impossible, The Equalizer, The Fugitive, 21 Jump Street, and many more, but on the other side of the coin dwell countless colossal failures.
For various reasons, the TV-to-movie pipeline has proven to be consistently inconsistent, with the following ten titles designated as the worst the jump from screens small to big has had to offer.
The 10 worst TV to movie adaptations:
10. Land of the Lost (2009, Brad Silberling)
To say creators Sid and Marty Krofft were less than enthusiastic at seeing their cult favourite family-friendly fantasy transformed into a $100million Will Ferrell vehicle would be an understatement, considering the duo called it “one of the worst films ever made” during an appearance at San Diego Comic-Con.
Failing to come close to recouping its budget from cinemas and securing the ignominy of being named ‘Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off, or Sequel’ at the Golden Raspberry Awards – admittedly, its only victory from eight nominations in total – Ferrell, Anna Friel, and Danny McBride being drawn into a vortex and transplanted to a fantastical world full of dinosaurs was an unmitigated disaster on all fronts.
9. Baywatch (2017, Seth Gordon)
Dwayne Johnson is undoubtedly one of the biggest, most popular, and bankable stars Hollywood has at its disposal, but his ill-advised remake of the sun-kissed cultural behemoth took such a pasting from critics that it’s ranked as the worst movie of his entire career on Rotten Tomatoes.
Baywatch was a hit, as most of his big-screen outings tend to be, even if it’s somewhat telling that the sequel, which was publicly announced to have been written shortly after its release, has never been mentioned again. Lacking the tongue-in-cheek camp and cheesy charm that made its forebear so popular, the end result was an uninspiring and formulaic studio comedy that left everything to be desired.
8. Lost in Space (1998, Stephen Hopkins)
While Lost in Space has since been remade again to much more acclaim through Netflix’s expansive four-season reinvention of the 1960s classic, the original plan was for the sci-fi blockbuster to launch a wide-ranging multimedia franchise that covered film, television, books, and other assorted merchandise.
Naturally, that didn’t come to pass when the misfiring cosmic caper was roundly savaged in reviews and by paying customers alike, even if it did manage to earn $136m from multiplexes. When not even Gary Oldman in scenery-chewing form can elevate a film above mediocrity, it’s fair to say something has gone seriously wrong.
7. The Dukes of Hazzard (2005, Jay Chandrasekhar)
Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott had risen to fame in the early 2000s as the stars of Jackass and American Pie, respectively, so it was always clear that The Dukes of Hazzard was going to be decidedly nearer the knuckle than its “aw shucks” inspiration, especially with Broken Lizard’s Jay Chandrasekhar in the director’s chair.
A lifeless action comedy that devoid of both laughs and excitement despite its format of choice, Jessica Simpson losing out to Paris Hilton in the ‘Worst Supporting Actress’ category at that year’s Razzies offers a damning indication of how mid-budget genre cinema was being approached by the major studios at the time, with original star John Schneider voicing his bemusement to Moviehole: “My gosh… it was terrible! It wasn’t Dukes. It was true to whatever it was; I just don’t know what that was!”
6. Inspector Gadget (1999, David Kellogg)
Armed with a substantial $80m budget and the backing of Disney, Inspector Gadget appeared to be in safe hands when it made its way to cinemas in the summer of 1999, even if a suspiciously brief 78-minute running time (including credits) hinted that the production wasn’t entirely smooth sailing.
The concept of a mechanically-endowed crimefighter battling against the forces of evil has all the makings of easy-going, family-friendly fun, but a string of phoned-in performances against the backdrop of a subpar screenplay and disconcertingly shoddy visual effects saw the finished product end up as significantly less than the sum of its potentially promising parts.
5. Dudley Do-Right (1999, Hugh Wilson)
1999 was when Brendan Fraser secured his place as a bonafide Hollywood leading man when The Mummy became one of the biggest hits of the year, but all of that hard work was almost immediately undone when Dudley Do-Right cratered less than four months later.
Losing a fortune by way of earning just $10m against a $70m budget, the slapstick comedy indebted to the animated favourite who first debuted in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show was trounced by critics and denigrated by audiences, with the painfully unfunny caper failing to generate so much as a smirk despite its scattershot approach to relentlessly launching one-note gags at the screen.
4. The Avengers (1998, Jeremiah Chechik)
1960s episodic espionage had proven fertile ground for energetic, exciting, and hit Hollywood movies following the dual-pronged splash made by The Fugitive and then Mission: Impossible several years previously, but it’s difficult to imagine a world where The Avengers could have possibly turned out any worse than it did.
Alienating fans of the original while resolutely failing to win over any new converts, the nine-time Razzie nominee found leads Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, and Sean Connery all coasting through on autopilot, presumably fully aware that there was no way of salvaging a movie that found writer Don Macpherson telling Yahoo the notes he was given by Warner Bros to try and save it was “like listening to Stalin on crack.”
3. Thunderbirds (2004, Jonathan Frakes)
The pinnacle of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Supermarionation era never felt as if it would make a suitable candidate for a live-action adaptation given its endearing charms and lo-fi stylings, a sentiment that was proven right on the money when Star Trek veteran Jonathan Frakes’ dud was rightfully hung out to dry.
Offering his frank assessment, creator Anderson blasted the Thunderbirds movie as “the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my life” when auctioning memorabilia from the TV series, with any plans for further outings starring the charisma-free iterations of the Tracy family mercifully being abandoned when it was deservedly declared dead on arrival.
2. Wild Wild West (1999, Barry Sonnenfeld)
Nobody regrets Wild Wild West more than star Will Smith, who famously turned down the chance to play Neo in The Matrix to reunite with his Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld for what was the most expensive movie ever made at the time. Despite having voiced his dissatisfaction several times over, he still didn’t cover just how misguided the steampunk action comedy turned out to be.
A truly bizarre creation that seeks to fold elements of the classic western, blockbuster fantasy, buddy comedy, and established Smith vehicle into a cohesive whole but fails on every single one of those fronts and more, it’s easy to see why the leading man continues to lament his decision to sign on almost a quarter of a century after the fact.
1. The Last Airbender (2010, M. Night Shyamalan)
One of the most widely-acclaimed and heavily-supported animated shows of the modern age, M. Night Shyamalan’s take on Avatar: The Last Airbender was in a position to become a monster-sized smash hit that would easily lead to the filmmaker’s planned trilogy provided it managed to live up to expectations, do justice to the source material, and appeal to fans both old and new.
Obviously, that didn’t happen. Those with an affinity for the original Last Airbender were aghast, the uninitiated were left perplexed, and critics were more than happy to tear it to shreds. Nonsensical, illogical, interminably dull, woefully miscast, poorly acted, and an all-round disaster of legendary proportions, Shyamalan’s greatest folly isn’t just the worst TV-to-movie adaptation there’s ever been; it’s one of the worst blockbusters in Hollywood history.
