Bringing Big Screen Horror to Prime Time.

  

    I read over the weekend that my least favorite network is making a pilot for a TV series based on the Scream films, I can't think of any film to TV stories that were very successful in the past so I'm wondering how that's a good move?  I know it can work the other way around, I think The X Files did it in the 90's and I know people liked what was done with Serenity since Fire Fly had a following.  Even old school TV shows get made into decent films like Mission Impossible, that did well enough to earn a few sequels after the original one.  
 
      I watched the pilot for Zombieland : The Series last weekend, if you haven't read by now its reviews are mixed at best.  I didn't like it, it seemed rushed, cheap and the casting of Tallahassee the character Woody Harrelson played in the film was very disappointing in the series.  I read when the film was released that it was intentionally meant for TV in its inception but got made into a film.  I'm glad it went that route because I like that movie.  I didn't like the pilot but to each his own, its on Amazon instant video and it was free so check it out if you want to see for yourself.

     Spin offs from films seem to work out alright if they are filling in story blanks from the franchise, that seems to be the case with NBC's  Hannibal anyway.  Hannibal is taking the route of filling in some blanks of how the eventual showdown between Will Graham and Hannibal Lector come to be, what you hear about in Manhunter or what you see at the beginning of Red Dragon depending on which movie you watched if you weren't into the books.  A&E also has Bates Motel which is doing the same thing and Freddie Highmore does a real good job of playing a young Norman Bates.   It's MTV doing the Scream series so who knows what they have planned, maybe it'll work if they do something creative like with whats being done with Hannibal.  I know they did the Teen Wolf series and it has ran three seasons so maybe they have a formula that works for them at MTV.

     It looks like we'll have to wait and see but the direct formula of films to television doesn't seem like it works as good as television to film. I really haven't watched anything on MTV since they stopped playing music and Liquid Television so I really don't know how any of their shows are.  Maybe they'll get a good three seasons out of it.  How is Teen Wolf anyway?  I'll have to check Netflix I guess...