#178. Isu : TV shows that should get to the big screen

Forget making movies out of old TV series ... it’s time for Hollywood to strike while the iron is hot and get some of these popular shows into theatres now!

Why wait 20, 25 years after a TV show has run its course to make a movie out of it? Things are usually very different today from what they were back when that show was thriving.

So much so that, to be even halfway relevant to contemporary audiences, the movie version of the TV show has to be a little off the wall (The Brady Bunch Movie) or completely off the wall (Charlie’s Angels).
The TV and maybe even the cinepelex screen has become too small to contain Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). So why not offer 24 and its exalted hero in 3D?

If it’s way too excessive, a la Speed Racer, and promoted to the wrong crowd (why ignore the kiddies, the cartoon’s core audience?), then the studio behind the movie should be prepared to kiss its investment goodbye.

Yes, it’s just not the proper thing to do to drag long-dead TV shows out of the grave and pump oxygen into their flashily-reconstructed bodies.

C’mon, could anything have saved I, Spy? And you’d be really hard pressed to find anyone today who would buy that The A-Team’s crack commando unit and all their enemies never seem to hit anyone despite firing off 20,000 bullets at each other.

So, we ask Hollywood again: why wait? There are so many current TV shows out there today that would make terrific movies right now, today, and their multiple-million audiences would surely translate into big bucks at the boxoffice.

Serenity being made after Firefly doesn’t count, since hardly anyone watched the series when it was on. FOOLS (myself included)!

So we’d like to suggest a few current and recent TV shows that could make the transition from small screen ... to silver scream.

24: The Movie (in Digital 3D)

The TV screen, even in high definition, has become too small to contain Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and his torture-and-slay-the-terrorists escapades. For that matter, the cineplex screen may not suffice for the job, either.
Make millions of his female fans even more delirious by having McDreamy on the big screen in a movie version of Grey’s Anatomy.

So what’s a hapless studio exec to do to add a whole new dimension to the franchise? Why, add a third dimension, of course. If you thought only Brendan Fraser could make the most of digital 3D flicks, think again.

Besides, Sutherland already has some 3D experience, voicing a blustery general in the upcoming DreamWorks Animation’s Monsters vs Aliens.

Anyway: imagine a patented 24 torture scene being truly in your face, with lit cigarettes, syringes, red-hot gun barrels and flecks of Jack Bauer’s spittle seeming to leap out of the screen right at you.

Actually being in the victim’s seat as Jack applies his time-honoured methods of coaxing information from the stoniest of suspects would sure beat watching Jack torture his own brother from a detached third-person view.

Next, what do we do for a big-screen villain? Few hardcase bad guys could match Jack on the big screen, and we’d like to propose none other than the illustrious Habib Marwan himself, Arnold Vosloo.

Sure, Habib bit the dust in Season Four, but this is 24, and if Tony Almeida can come back from the dead ... why not Imhotep himself?

Yes, a 24 movie in 3D would make our entire day. (24 ... hours ... get it? Never mind.)

Grey’s Anatomy

I must confess, I don’t watch this show and so I have no idea what its big-screen incarnation could be about.

But it IS hot, and all I can offer is some advice to those hapless producers trying to cash in on all that McDreamy / McStreamyx / McDonough business: why lose sleep trying to find middling movie roles for Patrick Dempsey?

Just put him up there on the big screen in a role millions of women are already swooning over (if the fan habits of some people I know are anything to go by), for crying out loud.

And while you’ve got the good doctors of Seattle Grace doing their bed-hopping thing up on the big screen ... go for the hard “R” rating and throw that wussy TV-14 stuff in the can ... and by that, we mean toilet. Just don’t count on seeing any more of Grey’s anatomy, or anyone else’s, than our censors would allow.

LOST: The Experience

JJ Abrams’s show is a real brain-strainer. By this, we mean that it not only strains your thought processes, but it also makes you feel as if your brain really has gone through a strainer.

It doesn’t matter if the show is scheduled to end in 2010. There’s so much to the Lostiverse that entire episodes of the show have already been told without even once featuring any of the top-billed cast.

It’s not a great stretch to think that a movie version would need to feature any of those actors and actresses who are too busy conspiring to confound our feeble brains yet again.

With a bit of scriptwriting verve, why, an enterprising writer could even connect Cutthroat Island (or better yet, Peter Benchley’s The Island) to the time-jumping hunk of rock in Lost. Jenna Elfman could be the star of an entire movie that just focuses on the sinister workings of the Dharma Initiative.

Yes, the possibilities for big-screen Lost tales are even more endless than Tolkien’s Lost Tales.

And to honour the movie’s time-tripping nature, we could revert to the good old days of tiered pricing for cinema tickets – RM4, RM8, RM15, RM16, RM23 and RM42 (with popcorn combos thrown in for the last two).

CSI: Miami – Murder in the Shade(s)

Here’s another movie where the audience would stream in wearing glasses. Not the 3D variety, but Horatio Caine’s trademark sunshades.

CSI: Miami the movie would be noteworthy not so much for any great storyline or hypercharged action sequences, but simply for the endless cult-movie possibilities it would hold for fans – a true gimmick movie.

To help the Cult of Horatio Caine (search for it on YouTube) derive maximum enjoyment from the movie, on-screen prompts would appear to tell you: “Shades off!” or “Shades back on!” or “Shift your right shoulder menacingly towards the person beside you now!”

Patrons could be issued scorecards to keep track of how many times Horatio dons and removes his shades (for the homevideo version, this could be turned into a drinking game).

Cineplex walls would reverberate from the low drawl of hundreds of moviegoers echoing their hero’s “You’re not ... going to get away ... with murder.” or “Our victim ... could still be ... alive.” or “You … Klingon bastard ... you killed my son!” Oops, wrong overwrought line. But you get the idea, right?

Now, about the story. Who cares? Since they’ve faced down the Colombian mob and Russian mafia and most other suspects, how about an organisation that would really give Horatio and Co. a hard time – the Yakuza, another happy bunch whose screen incarnations also have a penchant for shades? Can you imagine the staredown possibilities?

Lastly, this writer’s personal wish would be for a Chuck movie to be made, if for no other reason than the possibility that Yvonne Strahovski might once again don her Halloween episode costume from Season 1 to save everyone’s favourite helpless nerd-turned-superspy. We can always dream ...

Source :
The Star
By DAVIN ARUL