Making movies from TV series is nothing new

So far this year the biggest movies on the block are all summer flicks. In fact, the top seven movies of 2009 have all been released since May 1.

In descending order from the top of the heap (drum roll, please), the biggest box-office blockbusters are — at the moment — "Up," "Star Trek," "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," "Monsters vs. Aliens," "The Hangover," "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian."

Obviously, "Transformers" is bounding to the front of that list with surprising speed and may arrive sometime during this Fourth of July weekend.

Of these seven movies, two are animated, one is an R-rated comedy, three are sequels and one, "Star Trek," is a remake — or a reimagining or a rebooting (depending on your semantic interpretation) of either a movie or a TV series or both (depending on your Trekness).

What, no "Supernatural" or "Heroes"? No theatrical adaptations of "Law & Order" or "CSI"? How about "Survivor: The Movie"? Or "24"?

Hey, none of those ideas are really that far-fetched when you consider how many movies have sprung from TV shows — even from reality TV, before it was called that.

And so far this year we've already had "Hannah Montana: The Movie" and "Land of the Lost."

In the case of "Star Trek," the original series ran from 1966-69 and the first movie came along in 1979, followed by nine sequels through 2002. And now this 2009 rejiggering is in theaters.

But let's go back to the beginnings of television to see where this all started.

Would you believe there were big-screen black-and-white incarnations in the 1950s of at least three popular sitcoms —"The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet," "Our Miss Brooks" and "The Life of Riley."

The '50s also saw big-screen color films of "Dragnet" and no less than two "Lone Ranger" movies.

One could also argue that "The Long, Long Trailer" is an "I Love Lucy" movie, except that Lucy and Desi play characters with different names.

And all of the above were made when each of these popular TV series was still running, and all the movies had original TV-show cast members.

The same thing happened during the next decade with "Batman," "The Munsters," "The Monkees," "The Flintstones" and "McHale's Navy."

In the '70s, two big-screen "Candid Camera" movies became the first "reality-TV" flicks, and films also came from "The Muppet Show."