15 Movies That Should Have Been TV Shows

You know a movie is good when you wish there were more of it. Trust us, we have all been there. Maybe it was an epic fantasy set in an extraordinary world, or a sci-fi space opera with story possibilities as vast as the stars. Or maybe it was just really funny, and we'd love to laugh for longer than an hour and a half.

Whatever the reason, there are many movies we wish were longer, and not just an hour or two longer. No, we wish they were as long as a TV show. Maybe they could have been a mini-series, with twice the length to flesh out the storylines. Or maybe they would have worked better as a multi-season show, and taken a deep dive into their respective worlds. Here are 15 films we would have liked to see get the TV treatment instead.

If you're a fan of Frank Herbert's "Dune," you have plenty of adaptations to choose from. There's David Lynch's much-maligned 1984 film (which still has its fans), the SyFy Channel miniseries "Frank Herbert's Dune," and, of course, Denis Villeneuve's epic films starring Timothée Chalamet. And yes, there already is a "Dune" TV show — the HBO prequel "Dune: Prophecy" — but that's based on "Sisterhood of Dune" by Frank's son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. No, we're talking about the real deal, a proper television adaptation of "Dune" that lasts for multiple seasons.

We're surprised Warner Bros. didn't turn "Dune" into an HBO TV show after the ends of "Game of Thrones" and the underwhelming "Westworld." There's certainly the material available. Herbert's original "Dune" series ran for six books, totaling more than 2,500 pages (depending on the edition). So a TV series could last for years based on Herbert's work, without ever having to rely on "filler" from the TV writers (because nobody wants that). "Dune" should have been a TV series, and we'll continue to say so until we're blue in the face — or should we say the eyes?

There is no shortage of "hot takes" about what Marvel did wrong in the aftermath of the record-breaking "Avengers: Endgame." Well, here's another one: "Eternals" should have been a TV series. Yes, a number of shows from Phases 4 and 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe turned Marvel from appointment viewing into homework. We get that, but that has more to do with multiple shows spanning at least eight episodes, each hovering around an hour a piece, without having the story to support it. Thus, we had several slow-burning episodes that were supposed to "establish mood," but wound up going nowhere.

That wouldn't have been the case with "Eternals" (or at least shouldn't have been). There are 10 main characters, with a story stretching back millennia and spanning the cosmos. The characters were a wee bit too obscure for a mainstream moviegoing audience, but would have been perfect for more diehard streaming viewers. Besides, maybe we'd have gotten a more satisfying answer to the dead celestial in the Indian Ocean.

If you started "Killers of the Flower Moon" when it was released in 2023, you're probably still watching it today. Or at least it felt like it. At three-and-a-half hours, "Killers of the Flower Moon" is half an hour longer than "Casino," an hour longer than "Goodfellas," and roughly an hour and a half longer than "Raging Bull" and "Taxi Driver." In other words, its runtime dwarfs Martin Scorsese's greatest movies (though it's still just a few minutes shorter than "The Irishman"). 

Far be it from us to tell the Maestro Marty how to cut his movies, but that's a long time for people to plant their keisters. Scorsese prefers to play in the sandbox of the movie theater, so hear us out: Scorsese could have cut "Killers" down to a more reasonable "theatrical cut" of two-and-a-half hours, while making a longer five- or six-hour miniseries for Apple TV to drive subscriptions. This would have killed two birds (or should we say two "flower moons") with one stone, fleshing out the story for TV while giving us a tighter film for theaters.

Stephen King likes to write a lot (which is putting it mildly). As such, adaptations of his work tend to run long because there are so many pages to cover. Well, in 2017, Sony Pictures decided to turn a couple of King's shorter books (relatively speaking) into a film, "The Dark Tower." With eight full-length novels in the "Dark Tower" series, Sony was hoping to launch a multi-film franchise. But with middling reviews and a minuscule $113 million worldwide box office, "The Dark Tower" collapsed, and with it, Sony's hopes for a cinematic franchise.

The studio would have been better off turning "The Dark Tower" into a TV show. The story is an epic blend of Western, fantasy, and sci-fi, a strange brew for discerning moviegoing audiences who are considering whether to plunk down $15 for a movie ticket, but it's par for the course for more TV viewers watching at home. While high-concept sci-fi can be hit-or-miss at the multiplex, it's fairly reliable on the small screen, which is where "The Dark Tower" should have started (a scenario Mike Flanagan seems to realize with his upcoming adaptation for Prime Video).

Ask fans of Max Brooks' 2006 novel "World War Z" what the 2013 film adaptation had in common with the book, and they'll tell you: "...the title." Basically, Paramount Pictures bought the brand and used it as a basis for an action movie starring Brad Pitt. It was expected to launch a franchise, but despite earning more than half a billion dollars worldwide, no sequel followed in its wake. Perhaps the studio would have been better off turning "World War Z" into a TV show.

There's certainly precedent. "The Walking Dead" put AMC on the map, and thanks to its 10,000 spin-offs and sequels (give or take), the series continues to keep the lights on at the cable service. Then there's the more recent "The Last of Us," which turns a flesh-eating zombie story based on a video game into a prestige HBO show. Could "World War Z" have done the same for another channel? We think so. Because as these super-successful series have shown, there's almost always an audience for zombies.

There have been plenty of TV shows based on movies, but a movie that serves as a prequel to a TV show? That's a bit of a stretch. Still, David Chase tried it with "The Many Saints of Newark," a prequel about the rise of Tony Soprano starring the late James Gandolfini's son Michael in his dad's old role. The results were unsurprising: a disastrous $13 million worldwide box office. 

The movie came out in 2021, 14 years after the finale of "The Sopranos." And while "The Sopranos" helped launch the era of prestige TV, it was still a show on a paid cable network. And while the series was a hit, success in the arena of paid cable TV is very different from success at the box office or network TV. Still, it was an interesting premise for viewers to discover how Tony Soprano came to be. The best place for a prequel to a TV show? You guessed it: a TV show.

Despite The Dark Knight's record-breaking ways at the box office, The Caped Crusader is equally impressive on the small screen, from the "Batman" TV show with Adam West to the groundbreaking "Batman: The Animated Series." Frankly, we think maybe Matt Reeves' "The Batman" could have been an all-time great Batman TV show, too. Yes, it was well-received by critics and fans, and Warner Bros. certainly appreciated its $772 million worldwide haul. But at nearly three hours, it was pretty long for a blockbuster movie. If WB had slightly stretched out its story for a TV series (or even just a miniseries), "The Batman" could have gone from a long movie into a tightly paced TV show that left us begging for more.

For starters, the film's street-level story would lend itself well to a dark and gritty crime drama, especially if it featured even more of Batman putting his skills as "The World's Greatest Detective" to the test. We could have gone behind the scenes of City Hall and the District Attorney's office to see the corruption plaguing Gotham City, or deeper into Carmine "The Roman" Falcone's crime empire and its stranglehold on the city. Frankly, we didn't get that much of Bruce Wayne sans the cape and cowl in the film (especially compared to Christopher Nolan's Wayne-centric movie trilogy), so we would have appreciated a bit more of Bruce. "The Penguin" soared as an adult-skewing TV show on HBO. "The Batman" could have, too.

Kevin Costner and superstar showrunner Taylor Sheridan infamously feuded in the lead-up to Costner's departure from "Yellowstone," the show that effectively resurrected his career. With his role as John Dutton behind him, Costner focused on his ambitious, multi-film "Horizon: An American Saga." Heck, Costner cared so much about the project, he even put in millions of his own money for the first movie (which bombed with $38.7 million worldwide).

Still, "Horizon" is Costner's dream undertaking, and we won't fault the guy for pursuing his passions; we just think he would have been better off pursuing them on TV. Sad to say, but Westerns are more misses than hits at the box office. But thanks to "Yellowstone," the genre is enjoying a bit of a resurgence on TV. Or at least, the "modern west" born of Sheridan's imagination. Costner used to be a butts-in-seats movie star, but now he is (or was) a reliable TV draw. Rather than go back in time, he should have moved his "Horizon" series to the small screen.

Released in 2003, "Eragon" is the first of the four-part "Inheritance Cycle" novel series that sprang from the mind of Christopher Paolini, who was at the ripe old age of 15 when he started the book. So yes, while the rest of us were getting into shenanigans and pretending to practice for our driver's exam, Paolini was writing a fantasy book. Sigh. Paolini's prose inspired a film of the same name, which was released in 2006 in the wake of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Chronicles of Narnia." 

However, the tale of dragon riders failed to catch fire with moviegoing audiences, eking out $250 million worldwide on a $100 million budget, a slim profit that would guarantee a sequel these days, but not in the mid-aughts."Eragon" is essentially a family-friendly "Game of Thrones" for viewers under 18. With a series of books available as source material, "Eragon" seems tailor-made for a TV show, which at one point it seemed like Disney+ was preparing.

"Firefly" is one of the most famous (and heartbreaking) examples of a TV show cancelled before its time. Fox canned it after only one season, breaking the hearts of Browncoats worldwide. So what would a second (or third and fourth) season look like? Thankfully, we don't have to wonder. It'd look a lot like "Serenity," Joss Whedon's big-screen sequel to his TV series. Sadly, the 2005 film fell flat, with only $40 million worldwide. Turns out making a movie sequel to a failed TV show was probably not the way to wealth and riches, though it certainly made the fans happy.

What would have made them even happier is a proper TV series. Basically, just expand the story of "Serenity" into another 14-episode series. But why should "Firefly" stop after only two seasons? There's an abundance of comics and novels available as source material, so a "Firefly" TV show could go on for years. We doubt a future "Firefly" is forthcoming, but we can always dream about what could have been.

If we're being honest, most Quentin Tarantino movies would make great TV shows. Imagine a series with Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) from "Pulp Fiction" bantering back and forth, the crew from "Kill Bill" going on jobs across the world, or Django (Jamie Foxx) trekking through the Old South to free slaves. But if we had to pick just one, we'd probably go back to "Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood."

Strange as it may sound, this is the coziest of Tarantino's films, and thus the one that would translate the best to the small screen in people's living rooms. The bromance between Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton and Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth is one of the best in modern movies, and we would have loved to see it explored on TV. Besides, there are plenty more stories to tell about Hollywood in the '60s and '70s when the duo was doing their thing. Clearly, Tarantino has a soft spot for the story, given he wrote a novelization and a sequel, "The Adventures of Cliff Booth," passing the directorial duties on to David Fincher.

Ridley Scott loves director's cuts, and for good reason: The format gives him a bigger canvas to play in, with way less interference. While "Blade Runner" is the most famous example, the bigger difference was with "Kingdom of Heaven." Scott's director's cut transformed a two-and-a-half-hour shallow slog that was a struggle to sit through into a powerful and thought-provoking three-hour-plus action epic. But do you know what would have made it even better? If it were a TV show.

The material is there. "Kingdom of Heaven" tells the tale of a blacksmith, grieving his wife's death, who joins his estranged father on the road to Jerusalem during the Crusades. Their perilous journey to the Holy City alone would make a great season of TV, while the battles would bring to mind "Game of Thrones," sans dragons. As shows like "Vikings" have shown us, there's a television audience ravenous for blood-stained medieval worlds.

"Dungeons & Dragons" has been entertaining geeks and irritating parents since it was first released in 1974. The show first inspired a cartoon series in 1983 that ran for three seasons. It has also been adapted into a terrible movie from 2000 starring Jeremy Irons and Marlon Wayans, and a so-so film from 2023, "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," starring Chris Pine and Hugh Grant. But none of those adaptations have hit the mark, so if we're playing Dungeon Master ("DM" for those in the know) over Hollywood, we would turn "Dungeons & Dragons" into a TV show.

With more campaigns than we can count, there's enough material for several seasons of a TV show. Heck, they could make so many sequels and seasons, it'd make what AMC is doing with "The Walking Dead" look modest by comparison. We can dream, but for now we'll just have to get our "D&D" fix on TV from the kids playing it on "Stranger Things."

If Prime Video has taught us one thing, it's that there is still a huge audience for "Dad Shows," namely programs like "Bosch," "Reacher," "Cross," and "Jack Ryan." Basically, shows about a badass kicking butt, with the character being the title of the show. Do you know what would go perfectly with that lineup? Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt stories.

Cussler's globe-trotting adventurer was brought to the screen for the first (and thus far only) time in a 2005 film starring Matthew McConaughey. Alas, McConaughey was miscast, and the film failed to connect with new or existing fans or launch a film franchise, earning a pretty disastrous $119 million worldwide. But you can't keep a good character down. It's only a matter of time before the IP-hungry Hollywood execs come after Dirk Pitt again. Hopefully, this time they'll do what they should have done in the first place: make a TV show.

"World of Warcraft" (or "WOW") is a multi-media, multi-platform, multi-player (whew, that's a lot of "multis") online role-playing game that has a massive fanbase of dedicated gamers worldwide. It takes place on the planet Azeroth, where the Alliance and the Horde battle it out. Throw in ancient evils like the Burning Legion and Old Gods, a wicked titan, plus battles between humans, orcs, elves, dwarves, and more, and you have the basis for an epic TV show.

It was already the basis for an epic film that earned $439 million, a tidy sum to be sure, but only $47.4 million came from the U.S. and Canada, with the bulk coming from China. Thus, despite being one of the highest-grossing video game adaptations ever, we haven't gotten a sequel, and probably never will. In hindsight, the producers of "Warcraft" should have done what "Game of Thrones" did before and "The Witcher" did afterward, and that's to make a TV show. With its massive mythos, deep lore, and bevy of characters battling over good and evil, "Warcraft" could easily be the centerpiece on a cable network or streamer's TV slate.