On Wednesday, March 13, Warner Brothers announced their approval for Rob Thomas' fundraising project for a new movie based on the three season-show, “Veronica Mars”, that concluded in 2007. The fundraiser began Wednesday morning with the announcement that its goal was to raise $2 million in 30 days, or else the movie wasn’t going to happen. 12 hours later, producer and creator of the show, Thomas, and star of the show, Kristen Bell, proudly said that they had raised even more than their goal, and the movie was set to premiere by 2014.
Well, considering this show is still one of my favorites, even after it got cancelled, I was thrilled to hear about the making of the movie. First thing that came to mind: They better not switch up the cast of the show. One thing that drives me up the wall is when you have gotten so comfortable with certain characters and then the actors of those characters change and you have to question even for a minute – who is that?
So, I started looking up some other shows that had become movies in the past years, and wow; I did not realize how many there really were and how many of them I had actually seen.
The first show I saw: “21 Jump St.” Of course, I love that movie. It was pretty funny, and come on, it had Channing Tatum; enough of a reason right there to go see it. But, I didn’t realize it was a show that lasted four seasons in the late 80s and early 90s, and starred Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise (which explains their appearances at the end of the movie).
I have to admit, I think they did a good job incorporating the show into the movie while still giving it its own unique story. And it still included the same characters from original show in some way, which is the most important thing a movie can do.
Next, probably one of the most popular TV to movie transformations, “Sex and the City” (1 and 2). This one did an excellent job of taking the original actors and placing them in their exact same positions. Four years after the last episode of the show aired, the movie came out during the summer of 2008, and made a killing at box offices the first weekend with over $152 million in total.
Every original character was kept for the movies, even the second one, and I’m sure the die-hard fans were more than thrilled to see that. Not having watched the show itself, I was pleased with the movies, even though they were not the best I’ve ever seen and are definitely chick flicks, this is still a good example of a decently made Hollywood rendition of a television show.
And I’m sure no one can forget the wonderful “Hannah Montana: The Movie” that aired during the actress/singer’s prime back in 2009, when her show, “Hannah Montana”, was in the middle of its second out of five seasons. The movie barely made a dent with ratings, but unfortunately it still makes the list of movies that did well adapting their original shows (emphasis on unfortunately). I won’t take long for this one, but it kept the same characters, did well picking up where the show was at the time, and had a pretty attractive guy in it that no one ever saw make an appearance on the show – curiously.
I’ll just touch on one more adaptation that was actually pretty big for my generation (those “Kim Possible” and “Phil of the Future” kids): “The Lizzie McGuire Movie” still sits in my movie pile at home, and, for some reason, that movie will never get old. I can’t account for its ratings, or how much it made opening weekend because it really isn’t even enough to mention.
However, it was a movie for those who had watched the show, and I know many a girl my age now, who did. Just the other week, my friends and I wanted to turn it on because it was that type of movie that just ended a show so well. The episodes had long been over on Disney Channel and the movie wrapped it up pretty nicely – if not epically cheesy.
Now, of course there are plenty more I could talk about, like “Bewitched” or “The Simpsons” or even as far as “The Even Stevens Movie,” but all I can say is that with my “Veronica Mars” movie in the making, I can only hope that Thomas and Bell do just as good of a job with it as they did with the show. And if they re-cast Kristen Bell for the leading role of Veronica, they will be disappointing not only every fan out there, but me especially.
*** This editorial is an opinion stated by the writer and does not represent the views of The Rotunda or Longwood University.
