The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

Does Superman count as a hit TV series from a past era?

No, because it's not primarily remembered as one. I'm talking about something was really only and primarily a TV series, recast as a film, with a deliberate "update" on the old, generally featuring bankable stars in the iconic roles. One of the earliest I can think of is the Ackroyd/Hanks Dragnet, but that's probably just because I have a lousy memory...

Dragnet was 1987, and the genre did seem pretty well established even by then, before descending into the Flintstones, Beverly Hillbillies, and Dukes of Hazzard. Flash Gordon was 1980, but, same problem as Superman.

Exactly -- isn't "seems" the crucial word?

I'd have said the superhero franchises of Superman and Batman helped inaugurate the trend...but Tim Burton's Batman wasn't until 1989. The Addams family is 1991, and the Fugitive (one of the only enduring movies of the bunch) is 1993. Maybe Dragnet is a pioneering work!

I'm not sure why Star Trek doesn't qualify. The first movie wasn't part of a franchise when it came out. The success of the movie established the franchise.

I'm going to guess that Twilight Zone: The Movie doesn't count, since it's not one feature-length story.

The only serious competition I can think of for Dragnet is The Untouchables, which came out the same year.

There was a Dragnet movie in 1954, too!

Right, but we're not talking about concurrent movies or the Lone Ranger in 1958 and Batman the movie in the 60s would count too, correct?

OK, what about "The Nude Bomb"? I saw it in the movie theatre in 1980 in Concord NH, with my sister. But it did utilize the (then older) original cast of Get Smart.

I can see that both Star Trek and Get Smart (the Nude Bomb) would be eliminated because of the original cast being used (same for Dragnet, 60s Batman, etc.). I would then go for the Untouchables, if only because it was better than Dragnet.

The 1960s Dr Who movies starring Peter Cushing could almost qualify, given that they had a different cast and character/plot points... but if you're after the wave of remakes at some remove from the original series, without original cast-members being involved in the same roles, then the earliest I can think of is The Untouchables. Here's an old NYT story on the phenomenon from 1987, which gives some slightly earlier candidates:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5D61F3DF932A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

I should have articulated it better, Scraps -- the Star Trek films seemed different in quality to me, given that they employed the same cast for one thing. It was the phenomenon of bringing a beloved series "out of mothballs" and into modern dress for a new outing, with entirely new faces, that I was trying to track the genesis of.

Thanks for the link, Rory - that's pretty helpful.

What's interesting is how unusual, in retrospect, The Untouchables looks, with its determination to borrow only what it needed from the original, and its spurning of any camp sensibility of reference (although Costner's difficulty with delivering many of Mamet's lines make it unintentially campy in another vein), like a totally different species from the winking action-comedies and teen-level comedies that have largely been the rest.

The Fugitive, I suppose, being the other exception, as it was pretty much a straight action picture that seemed to prefer you forget any connection to its originary series, except maybe for the plot device of the one-armed man.

"The Man From UNCLE--To Trap A Spy," released in US 1966 (I saw it, but can remember nothing at all).

I think the improv/weird theatre scene in Chicago's early 90s led to the first winky-winky "retelling" of the Brady Bunch movie, which seemed to spawn an unholy series of 70s nostalgia films which I have since attempted to studiuosly ignore.

I have a 1980 issue of Playboy with an article about the Star Trek movie that contains a sentence to the effect of "movies have often been the inspiration for TV programs, but now somebody's trying to reverse things." Funny how completely that's changed.

"This is the sort of question Wikipedia will have a list for," I said, and was right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TV_shows_made_into_films

They have a taxonomy that roughly accords with Bill's: the section you're looking for is "TV shows remade or adapated into movies." It's organized alphabetically, however.

There's a few early examples from TV shows that weren't really hits (Pennies From Heaven, Police Squad): just eyeballing that list, I think Dragnet might be the earliest example of the quasi-ironic redredging of old TV shows, hoping to exploit the nostalgia for yuks.