We can all agree that being introduced to a new show, falling in love with it, and then having it canceled after a season with a cliffhanger is the worst. It’s been happening more often these days, but it’s nothing new to the television industry. There is a long list of TV shows that were canceled before there prime. But, fortunately, a lucky few were continued into movies to give their fans more content and closure.
That isn’t the only reason for TV shows to be adapted into a movie. Animated TV shows in general tend to produce feature-length movies in order to expand their plots further than they ever could in a 20-minute episode. Others series may have been completed the way they were meant to be, but benefited from movie continuation just because no one was ready to let go of their favorite characters just yet.
Whatever the reason, here are some of the more iconic TV shows that continued their story in a movie!
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10 Batman: The Animated Series
Warner Bros. Animation
Among the many, many, many Batman projects that have been created, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is a direct continuation of Batman: The Animated Series. It was released between season one and two and even got its own theatrical release. Though the theatrical release was a bust due to it being such a last minute decision, it found financial success when it came to TV.
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The story follows Batman as he tries to deal with the return of Andrea, his fiancée who mysteriously disappeared 10 years prior, as well as a mysterious figure called the Phantasm. Phantasm is out to kill Gotham’s top gangsters, but it’s Batman that is getting blamed.
9 Sex and the City
HBO
After the Sex and the City TV series ended in 2004, there were two movies that followed before the revival was announced. The first, titled Sex and the City: The Movie, was released in 2008. It revolves around Carrie’s wedding to Mr. Big that may or may not happen, Miranda’s broken relationship with Steve, and Charlotte’s surprise pregnancy.
The second, titled Sex and the City 2, premiered in 2010. This time, the foursome takes an all expense paid trip to Abu Dhabi for Samantha’s job. Carrie uses this trip as an opportunity to take a break from her floundering marriage with Big and Charlotte does the same for a break from her children. Miranda, who just quit her job and is on hormone therapy for her libido, is the one who is most excited to explore.
Both were met with commercial success, but the first, and more so the second, were critically torn apart.
8 The Muppet Show
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
There are a lengthy line of Muppet movies that originated from The Muppet Show, a beloved TV series that ran from 1976-1981. The first movie that spawned from the show as released in 1979, a couple of years before the series ended. It was named simply The Muppet Movie and told the story of how the Muppets first met and their long trip to Hollywood to be discovered.
This movie was followed by countless others including The Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island, Muppets in Space, and The Muppets Take Manhattan. The most recent installments are The Muppets, released in 2011, and Muppets Most Wanted, released in 2014.
7 Futurama
20th Century Studios Home Entertainment
Because of uncertainty with the network and a premature cancelation that was ultimately recant, Futurama has had far too many series finales. The original happened when it was canceled after season four, but it was rendered moot when Comedy Central decided that the series was going to be concluded by four straight-to-DVD movies. The first of these was Futurama: Bender’s Big Score. This was followed by Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs, Futurama: Bender’s Game, and, finally, Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder.
The final moments of the last movie shows the entire crew headed for a wormhole, leaving the ending open and up for interpretation. However, the series was then renewed, and an answer was given to what happened after the credits rolled. Because of this, the four movies were split into episodes and are now considered season five to the show. Two more finales were created after, one at the end of season seven because they did not know if it would be renewed, and finally, the end of season eight, which was considered the actual conclusion until just recently, when the news hit that Futurama is, once again, getting renewed.
6 The Simpsons
20th Century Fox
As one of the longest running TV series in history, The Simpsons is not indicating any sign of stopping soon. The show creators realized this and instead of releasing The Simpsons Movie like they planned after the show ended, they released it in between season 18 and season 19.
The movie ups the ante and explores a more grandiose storyline involving the EPA and Springfield being trapped under a dome due to the critically high pollution in the late, that unsurprisingly, Homer causes. Marge and Homer’s marriage is put to the test, Lisa finds the perfect love interest, and Bart grows close to Flanders because of Homer’s negligence.
The movie, released in theaters, was both a critical and commercial success.
5 The X-Files
20th Television
The popular science fiction show X-Files ran from 1993-2002 and spawned two movies. First of the movies, titled The X-Files took place between the fifth and the sixth season of the series and focused on the extraterrestrial themes that are prevalent in the show. The story follows special agents Scully and Mulder as they investigate a bomb threat in Texas, which turns out to have connections to an alien “virus” that is spreading to humans and ultimately killing them.
The second movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, was released ten years later, after the end of the series. This film went in a different direction and was meant to be a standalone horror movie, as opposed to one focused on extraterrestrial mythology. In it, Scully must convince Mulder to help out the FBI with the mysterious disappearance of several women. The case quickly takes a dark turn, involving corrupted clergyman and a lot of severed body parts.
4 Star Trek
Paramount Pictures
Star Trek is a vast and complicated franchise with multiple series and more than a few movies. The earliest series, Star Trek: The Original Series, spawned the franchise’s first journey to the big screen with the creation of six movies after the show’s cancelation in 1969. These movies included Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
The second set of movies came after the cancelation of Star Trek: The Next Generation. These movies, featuring The Next Generation cast, included Star Trek Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, and Star Trek: Nemesis.
Most recently, the Star Trek “reboot” films were released, featuring a younger cast of the characters from The Original Series. These included Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond.
3 Pokemon
Toho
Much like Star Trek, Pokémon seems to have an endless amount of sequential series and movies. As one of the most successful video game to anime transitions, it’s no wonder that the show ran for 25 seasons. The first movie to originate from this franchise is Pokémon: The First Movie.
The movie revolves around the show’s main protagonist, Ash, and his fellow Pokémon trainers, Misty and Brock. They receive a mysterious invitation to battle the world’s greatest Pokémon trainer on a nearby island. After accepting the invitation and fighting their way to the island, they realize that the world’s greatest Pokémon trainer is actually the psychic Pokémon, Mewtwo, who was created in a laboratory. Ash and his friends then must battle the clone versions of their Pokémon while Mewtwo battles the Pokémon that he was created from.
After Pokemon: The First Movie, there have been 22 others films created from the series.
2 Breaking Bad
Netflix
After the critical and commercial acclaim that Breaking Bad received during its five seasons, it seems natural that they would create a movie, as well. The film, El Camino, was released in 2019, six years after the end of the show. It acts as a sequel and epilogue to Breaking Bad and follows Jesse Pinkman as he deals with the fallout of his actions in the show. Now a fugitive, Jesse struggles to find the means to start over, risking his life and calling in dangerous favors in order to escape to Alaska.
The movie achieved the same success as the show and is generally considered a positive addition to the franchise.
1 Firefly
Firefly is one of the most notorious situations of a preemptive cancelation. Despite missing episodes and episodes aired out of order, the show still gained a cult following that left a lot of people upset about the cancelation. Due to the post-airing success of the series, it was decided that a movie would be produced in order to continue the story and give it the proper ending that it deserves.
The movie, titled Serenity, was released in 2005 and features the original crew from the series. The story delves further into River’s backstory of being conditioned by the Alliance to be a psychic assassin. The crew investigates an incident in which River is secretly triggered to murder innocent people, which leads them to uncovering huge Alliance secrets that put them all in danger.
