The end is never the end in the world of intellectual property. As long as fans are loud and annoying enough, and someone thinks there is more money to be made, even a long-canceled television show can return in some form or fashion.
Typically, that form or fashion is another television show; a revival or a reboot or hey, even an animated version. (You ever see The New Adventures of Gilligan? That lovable scamp is never getting off that island!) Once in a while, though, the fanbase for a show gets so loud and so annoying that a studio will shunt it from television to movies, hoping to reap major box-office bucks while giving viewers their favorite characters on a scale they’ve never witnessed before.
Movies based on TV shows also come in different shapes and sizes: Remakes, reboots, and prequels are all common. Every so often, a TV show will prove so popular that it will produce and release a big-screen adaptation while new episodes are still airing, like the films of the 1960s Batman or the first X-Files movie (sometimes referred to as X-Files: Fight the Future), which takes place between the fifth and sixth seasons of the show.
Perhaps rarest — and therefore most interesting — of all is a show that ends on television but then magically returns to life as a film. These films are usually designed to conclude years of storylines that a moviegoing audience may not even know. But sometimes they prove so popular that they can drive demand for more sequels, or a return to TV and more episodes.
Just in time for Netflix to release a new example, here are 15 times TV shows ended only to then continue as movies.
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Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky