From Breaking Bad to Sex and the City: When TV Shows Spawn Movies

Television

If the last few years have proven anything, it’s that “the end” on TV rarely means what it used to.

While the revival craze of late has seen shows like Will & Grace, Last Man Standing, Fuller House and Roseanne return to the small screen with most, if not all of their original casts in tact for new seasons of shows long thought dead—or season, in the case of the latter, which quickly became The Conners because, well, you know why—to say nothing of the countless reboots of classic IP, like One Day at a Time, Charmed and Lost in Space, reinvented with new casts for a new generation, there’s another path to life after death for beloved series that’s picking up considerable steam: the sequel film.

In 2019 alone, we’ve already gotten two of them, with HBO finally giving Deadwood fans closure this past May and PBS fans getting one last trip to the iconic Downton Abbey last month, with the third, and perhaps most highly-anticipated, arriving on October 11 with the debut of El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie on Netflix and in limited theatrical release.

The film, which picks up after the stunning events in the seminal AMC series’ series finale and was written and directed by series creator Vince Gilligan, follows Aaron Pauls Jesse Pinkman as he recovers from the torture he escaped while attempting to evade capture, blamed for the shootout facilitated by a dead Walter White (Bryan Cranston) that made his escape possible.

This trend, however popular it’s become this year, is nothing new, though. Since the original cast of Star Trek made the leap to the big screen back in 1979, a decade after the series that spawned it was canceled, lucky shows have been getting similar treatment. In honor of El Camino, let’s take a look at all the scripted series who’ve gotten the feature film treatment over the last 30 years. 

Lynch-Frost/Kobal/Shutterstock

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers The Movie, 1995

Jim Townley/Saban/Toei/Kobal/Shutterstock

South Park: Bigger Longer And Uncut

Moviestore/Shutterstock

The X-Files: I Want to Believe, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson

Twentieth Century Fox

Serenity, Nathan Fillion

Moviestore/Shutterstock

The Simpsons Movie

Matt Groening/20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock

Sex And The City Movie, Cast

New Line Cinema / Warner Bros. Home Video

Entourage Movie, Adrian Grenier, Jeremy Piven

Claudette Barius/Warner Brothers/Hbo/Kobal/Shutterstock

Veronica Mars, '00s Movie Couples

Warner Bros. Home Video

Deadwood: The Movie, Ian McShane

Warrick Page/HBO

Downton Abbey

Focus Features

Aaron Paul, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

Netflix

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is in theaters and available to stream on Netflix now.

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