Star Trek's finest hour, David Lynch's masterpiece, and a gangster movie saved by its star. More classic films were destined for the small screen than you might expect.
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00:00Star Trek's finest hour, David Lynch's masterpiece, and a gangster movie saved by its star. More
00:07classic films were destined for the small screen than you might expect.
00:10In 1995, Alicia Silverstone starred as cheery, upbeat fashionista Cher Horowitz in Clueless,
00:17a razor-sharp satire of life at a Southern California high school. Populated by a cast
00:22of lovable oddballs, Clueless became a pop culture phenomenon and catapulted just about
00:28every member of its cast to stardom.
00:30Ah, as if!
00:32But this movie wasn't always ticketed for big-screen success. It was originally slated
00:37for TV. The film's writer and director, Amy Heckerling, told Entertainment Weekly back
00:41in 1995,
00:42"'Originally, it wasn't called Clueless. When I first pitched it as a TV show, it was called
00:47No Worries."
00:4820th Century Fox said they wanted a show about teenagers, but not the nerds. They wanted
00:53it to be about the cool kids. According to producer Twink Kaplan, though, Fox wasn't
00:57sold on their pitch. In the same interview, Kaplan told Entertainment Weekly,
01:01"...when we showed No Worries to Fox, it was obvious they didn't get it. They thought the
01:05script needed more boys in it."
01:06Apparently, nobody quite understood the premise of a positive, sunny teenager in the cynical,
01:11grunge-obsessed early 90s. Eventually, however, Heckerling's concept landed in the hands of
01:16a producer who loved it and just so happened to have a movie deal with Paramount. Heckerling
01:21would eventually get her TV series, too, with Stacey Dash as in a sitcom spinoff that ran
01:26for three seasons.
01:28Director Rob Reiner is arguably one of Hollywood's most underrated creatives. In addition to
01:32directing classics like The Princess Bride and Stand By Me, he also acts with memorable
01:37roles in everything from All in the Family to New Girl. However, his most personal project
01:43might be the 2015 film Being Charlie, not just because he directed it, but because it
01:47was the first film written by his son, Nick Reiner.
01:50A semi-autobiographical story of a young man who lives in the shadows of his famous father,
01:55the movie follows Charlie, a troubled teen whose struggles land him in rehab. According
02:00to Nick, however, it wasn't always destined to be a movie, originally beginning life as
02:04a pilot script for a half-hour comedy series. He developed the concept while he himself
02:09was staying at a rehabilitation clinic, and it eventually morphed into a script for a
02:12movie with the help of his father. In fact, the making of Being Charlie helped heal a
02:17rift between the real-life father and son duo.
02:19Rob Reiner told ABC News in 2015,
02:22Over the course of making the film, our relationship definitely changed. It wasn't terrible or
02:26anything, but it got better because I then understood a lot more of what he had gone
02:30through, and he understood a bit more of what I had gone through.
02:33Arguably David Lynch's defining film, Mulholland Drive is a dark drama about an aspiring actress
02:39who befriends a young woman suffering from amnesia. A masterpiece of modern cinema, its
02:44mix of mystery, crime noir, abstract dreamscape, and genuine horror made it not just one of
02:49Lynch's best, but a film many consider flawless.
02:53No, I, Banda, it is all a tape.
03:02Fans of the film might be surprised to learn it almost wasn't a movie at all, as Mulholland
03:07Drive was originally dreamed up as a TV spinoff to another classic Lynch story. Following
03:11the smash success of his primetime ABC thriller Twin Peaks, Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost
03:17were preparing a second series centered on the character Audrey Holm, which was to be
03:21named after a famous street in Los Angeles where Frost lived.
03:24In the book Conversations with Mark Frost, the series co-creator talked about how the
03:28movie evolved from a TV pilot script to a feature-length big-screen success. He wrote,
03:33"...we had considered spinning off the Audrey character and setting her loose in Hollywood
03:37in a modern noir. We had very preliminary talks. It drifted away, and then six years
03:42later, I hear it's going to be a pilot at ABC."
03:45But when ABC passed on the project, Lynch reworked it into a single feature film with
03:49an entirely new cast of characters. Though Frost could only speculate as to why, he said,
03:55"...maybe because Twin Peaks had crashed and burned after its first season, there wasn't
03:59much appetite for spinning off a series from it."
04:02In the 1980s, science fiction saw a surge in popularity. The decade saw a number of
04:07classics about monsters or aliens coming from outer space. At the same time, dystopian sci-fi
04:13stories about futuristic lawmen were also in vogue. So, in 1988, the gritty sci-fi crime
04:18drama Alien Nation had the idea to marry those two concepts, putting an alien in the role
04:23of a cop on the hunt for a killer.
04:25The film starred James Caan as Matthew Sykes, an LAPD detective who has reluctantly partnered
04:30with alien officer Sam Francisco. Even though Alien Nation turned out to be a relatively
04:34well-received movie, its creator, Rockne S. O'Bannon, always had a TV series in mind.
04:40After failing to get a development deal at a major studio, the project landed in the
04:43lap of James Cameron and his partner Gayle Ann Hurd, who, hot off the production for
04:48Aliens, absolutely loved the concept. With a duo of Hollywood producing stars behind
04:53it, Bannon was more than happy to reshape his TV series into a feature film. A year
04:58after the film was released, of course, Bannon would finally get his wish when Alien Nation
05:03received a television spinoff.
05:05With its tongue firmly planted in its rotting cheek, Zombieland is a wild satire of the
05:11horror genre. With a big-name cast that included an iconic cameo by Bill Murray, the movie
05:16became a big box office hit and, for a time, was the highest-grossing zombie movie ever
05:22made.
05:23I avoided other people like they were zombies even before they were zombies. Now that they
05:27are all zombies, I kinda miss people."
05:30Before it landed in theaters, however, Zombieland was the brainchild of future Deadpool writers
05:35Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who were hoping to turn their idea of a humorous zombie apocalypse
05:39into a TV series. In 2009, Reese told Gizmodo,
05:42"...we wrote it as a TV pilot and sold it to CBS. They had a lot of notes, which we addressed.
05:48And then when they decided to not make the pilot, we unaddressed a lot of them. We went
05:53back to what we had."
05:54Somewhere during the rewriting process, Reese and Wernick decided to turn their pilot script
05:58into a movie screenplay instead. Years later, the duo got another shot at television and
06:03filmed an episode for a spinoff as part of Amazon's 2014 pilot program. While reviewers
06:08had kind words, the streaming service passed on turning it into a full series.
06:12Some TV-to-movie evolutions come about when a producer feels an idea is too good to be
06:17limited to the small screen. Others move their show to a feature film when a producer has
06:22connections with a major movie studio. However, the 2020 gangster biopic Capone took a longer
06:27and more complicated path. It took more than 30 years, two entirely different projects,
06:33and the influence of Hollywood star Tom Hardy to get the movie made.
06:37The journey began in the 1970s with a TV pilot for a show called Cicero. The proposed series
06:42was created by The Wild Bunch scribe Waylon Green. After decades in limbo, it was finally
06:47picked up by Warner Bros. in 2010, by which time the script had evolved into a screenplay
06:51for a big-budget motion picture. A year later, Hardy signed on with Harry Potter director
06:56David Yates, slated to help the project. Things never fell into place, however, and
07:00the project was ultimately scrapped.
07:02Despite this setback, Hardy had fallen so in love with the idea of playing Al Capone
07:07that he revived the concept a few years later. Hardy sought the help of beleaguered director
07:11Josh Trank, who, in turn, was looking for a comeback after years of controversy. Initially
07:16titled Fonzo, the final result was the streaming original Capone.
07:20The late 1990s and early 2000s were awash with teen horror films, beginning with the
07:25wild success of 1996's Scream. Four years later, Final Destination brought the trend
07:31into the new millennium, sparking its own franchise that saw a slew of sequels over
07:35the next 11 years. The first told the story of an ill-fated airline flight whose would-be
07:40passengers had been destined to die, but it was almost something else entirely.
07:44Believe it or not, the premise of Final Destination was originally developed as a script for The
07:49X-Files. The proposed episode, titled Flight 180, was fairly similar to what ended up on
07:54the big screen. A handful of passengers exit a doomed flight before takeoff after one of
07:59them has a fateful premonition, only for each of them to die one by one in other gruesome
08:04ways. However, in this earlier version, the passenger who had the premonition of the plane's
08:09ultimate destruction was Scully's brother, lending the story some serious suspense as
08:13the two paranormal investigators raced against time to save him.
08:17According to Legend, however, writer Jeffrey Reddick never sent the network his script.
08:21Having been advised by a friend at New Line Cinema felt the idea was far too good to be
08:25confined to a single episode of an existing franchise.
08:29The landmark TV series Star Trek dazzled audiences for three seasons in the 1960s, before low
08:35ratings forced its cancellation. But when it got hot in reruns in the 70s, talk of a
08:40revival surfaced, and a feature film seemed like the next logical step. While audiences
08:45were eventually handed a big-budget continuation in 1979, Star Trek The Motion Picture started
08:51out as a potential television relaunch under the title Star Trek Phase Two.
08:56"...Heading, sir?"
09:01"...Out there."
09:03Developed as a potential flagship series for the launch of their own television network,
09:07Paramount brought Trek creator Gene Roddenberry on board and began assembling scripts while
09:12the studio re-signed the cast to return. Famously, actor Leonard Nimoy declined,
09:16apparently due to tensions with the network over the sale of merchandise featuring his likeness.
09:21Nevertheless, the remaining cast was hired, the sets were constructed,
09:24and the new TV series was all set to go when a little film from George Lucas landed in theaters.
09:30After the success of Star Wars, Paramount pivoted to film. They used much of the
09:34work done for Phase Two, even repurposing its pilot script while also settling their
09:39conflict with Nimoy, who agreed to return as Spock. Remarkably, many of the original
09:44sets for Phase Two continued to be used on spinoff shows throughout the 1990s before
09:49being torn down after the conclusion of Star Trek Voyager, the series that had ultimately
09:53launched Paramount's TV network.
09:55City of the Dead isn't the kind of movie you might expect from the title. Released in 1960,
10:00the movie told the story of a mysterious town inn that turns out to be controlled by a coven
10:05of sinister witches.
10:06"...Some men, some women, whose power came from the devil, gathered beneath the Raven's Inn
10:12to perform a black mass in the honor of Lucifer."
10:15Initially developed by screenwriter George Baxt as a television pilot,
10:18City of the Dead was intended to be a starring vehicle for horror icon Boris Karloff.
10:23Having found little success with the networks at the time, producer Milton Sabatsky took it
10:27upon himself to fill out the story with some new characters, and City of the Dead was born.
10:31Stateside, the film was retitled Horror Hotel,
10:34and it remains a cult favorite of classic horror aficionados today.
10:39A teen thriller film from the mid-1990s, Cruel Intentions is a dark drama about a
10:44pair of step-siblings who play a twisted game on a celibate school friend. The movie was a
10:49modest hit that grew a fervent fan following, so it made perfect sense that a sequel would follow.
10:55The result was Cruel Intentions 2, a prequel set a few years earlier at a prestigious boarding
11:00school. It followed the exploits of a twisted teen who moves to a new town and gets involved
11:05in some serious drama of his own. Cruel Intentions 2 was released direct-to-video in 2000. It had a
11:10noticeably cheaper look and feel than its predecessor, and a new cast of mostly unknowns.
11:16Viewers of the first film who saw the sequel may have suspected what we all know now.
11:20The sequel was originally filmed as a TV pilot. As it turns out, following the success of the
11:26first movie, a spinoff prequel titled Manchester Prep was developed, and at least two episodes
11:31were filmed. Unimpressed with the results and concerned its envelope-pushing story might not
11:36play on network TV, the studio scuttled the project. In an attempt to recoup their investment,
11:41they chopped up the episodes and repackaged them as a direct-to-video feature.