Great Films and Series with Unorthodox Source Materials
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
We’ve all seen films and television series that are based on other works, primarily novels. We’ve seen films and shows adapt each other’s medium. There have been video game adaptations as well over the years, although the majority of these haven’t been too good (shout out to Arcane which is easily the strongest adaption from a video game I’ve ever seen). However, these are not the only sources that films and series can stem from. In fact, anything can be adapted if you are willing to make the leap. It’s fascinating to see where some works got their ideas from, but I also want to acknowledge that there are many attempts that just didn’t work out. I wish to avoid these, because, well, sometimes these kinds of adaptations just shouldn’t have been made (like The Emoji Movie being an adaptation of, well, emojis, which was an idea that was destined to fail from the very beginning). Any sort of source material is applicable here, and you will find all kinds. Let’s look at eleven unique examples of films and series with unorthodox source materials. Please note that sequels and prequels or instalments of franchises do not constitute as adaptations for this list (or at all, in my opinion), so anything of that nature won’t find its way here. Furthermore, I’m looking at films and shows, not the other way around (weird offshoots of famous films and shows), although that may make for an interesting list in the future. If this list does well, however, I can definitely dig up more films and shows with odd source materials, so keep an eye out for that eventually.
A Nightmare on Elm Street: Newspaper Articles
Wes Craven’s classic, A Nightmare on Elm Street, is so powerful because of how connected we feel to the surreal torture of Freddy Krueger (as well as the villain’s painful backstory that humanizes him). Craven derived his ideas for this film from awful newspaper articles he recalled from when he was younger, particularly ones about Hmong refugees that died from a lack of sleep; they tried to stay awake as to not suffer their traumatic nightmares after surviving genocides. These articles were printed in the 70s and left an imprint on Craven, who captured both sides of this horrific situation (being too afraid to sleep, but also dying from staying awake for too long) whilst placing the viewer in his own mindset. An extra element of this story, and why it takes place in a high school setting with young protagonists, comes from a memory from when Craven was a child: a creepy man peering into his window and then vanishing without a trace (an obvious starting point for Krueger).
Ted Lasso: Promotional Material
We all love Ted Lasso: the Kansas native that somehow wound up coaching a Premier League team (the fictitious AFC Richmond). It’s actually astonishing to be reminded that the Apple TV+ staple actually comes from promotional advertisements for NBC Sports when the network began covering the British football league that Lasso winds up in (although in these promos, Lasso is in charge of the very real Tottenham Hotspur Football Club). Jason Sudeikis represented the American audience being plunged into the world of English soccer culture, and this fish-out-of-water element made him a loveable character. Somehow, this made sense to turn into a fully fledged series, and Apple was happy to take this project on (they do have to credit NBC for the rights to the creation of Ted Lasso at the start of every episode). Lasso is fully realized, presented with very real issues and charm, and the rest is history. What started out as a gag to advertise a new segment is now one of television’s most beloved series.
Zola: A Twitter Thread
We’ve all been there: getting caught up in a rabbit hole of comments and threads online. Janicza Bravo saw an opportunity to reflect upon this sensation with one of the most interesting concepts for an independent feature in recent memory, and it all started when Twitter user Aziah King (or @_zolarmoon) posted at great lengths about the disastrous trip to Florida that she partook in (which was meant to be a way to earn some quick money, before King, also known as Zola, found herself getting into some dangerous situations thanks to the other members of her party). In an example of where real life is stranger than fiction, the film Zola honours this series of tweets as closely as possible (even down to having Twitter notification sounds to mark the end of each tweet as actress Taylour Paige narrates them). Zola is a messy film, but intentionally so: it captures the insanity of what went down, and the hysteria of reading these tweets and wondering what the hell could happen next.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On: Youtube Video
You can call Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate’s popular 2010 film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On a short film, which it technically is, but I want to consider it a viral video for the purpose of this article because that is more or less where the majority of 2022’s adaptation comes from (there are also additional shorts that came after this first one, mind you). The videos surround the cute titular carapace detail what life is like for the little guy, and the ongoing joke is that he has to create new ways of doing typical things because of his size. The 2022 feature film goes beyond that, and it actually focuses on what an online sensation Marcel becomes (much in the vein of how Marcel would actually respond to the attention he got back in 2010, if he were real). The feature for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On goes deeper into this lore and crafts an adorable-yet-emotional journey through one’s self, especially in the internet age where the world is smaller than ever before.
The Simpsons: Sketch Show Skits
This isn’t exactly a revelation, but the celebrated animated sitcom, The Simpsons, came from a series of skits from The Tracey Ullman Show. Dan Castellaneta and Julie Kavner, who were regulars of the show, lent their voices to this bizarre cartoon depiction of the dysfunctional American family (created by Matt Groening, who was commissioned because of his peculiar comic strip Life in Hell). Castellaneta voiced Homer Simpson, who originally was meant to be a spoof of Walter Matthau, and Kavner made mother Marge have the voice of a poor woman that has had to yell at her husband and children every day for an eternity. These small segments showcases a family at constant odds with each other, and its popularity would wind up in the spinoff that we are all very familiar with today. Still, it’s fascinating to see how far this series would go when its source material was meant to be a silly aside for a sketch comedy hour.
Jackie: An Interview
What helps make Pablo Larraín’s Jackie so compelling is how indebted to Jacqueline Kennedy’s actual testimonies the film is. That’s because it is actually based on her interview with Life Magazine’s Theodore White that came out shortly after John F. Kennedy’s funeral, where she was very upfront about what she was going through. The film doesn’t dance around this fact, by actually interpreting the interview itself as a part of the narrative (down to the bits that Jackie Kennedy would like struck from the interview, which still find their way into what we see). The end result is a darker, less romanticized version of the JFK story, and the one that the world needs to hear: the version with all of the imperfections and none of the sugar coating.
Clue: Board Game
While not the only film to be based on a board game (lest we forget the brutally boring Battleship), Clue is probably the best adaptation of the like that you are going to get. While not loved upon release, Clue: The Movie has endured a bit of life with its cult following in recent years; perhaps it is better received once the world was starving for whodunnit mysteries. Furthermore, there is the gimmick of having three different endings (marking separate culprit possibilities depending on which cinema you went to back in 1985, which are all available on any home release copy) that people now love as well, since you are getting multiple satisfactions for the price of one. The film otherwise captures the tone of the board game quite well, with silliness used to replicate the playful nature of playing a game, even with such serious subject matters. The casting is brilliant, which is wise, considering how Clue’s characters need to all feel alive in the same way we make them so whilst playing.
South Park: Viral VHS Tapes
The first three seasons of South Park feel a bit try-hard because Trey Parker and Matt Stone were working off of what they had. That is because the very first origins of the series came from a twisted Christmas card video that the duo worked on called The Spirit of Christmas, where Jesus Christ has to fight Frosty the Snowman on the former’s birthday. They were paid to make the same video with a better budget, so in this version, Jesus Christ now fights Santa Claus over the rights to the holiday. There are a couple of children there that are in danger of this brawl, and they’re the same boys that would wind up being the initial protagonists of South Park. Before the series happened, this Christmas card favour was pirated and shared via VHS tapes and then subsequently via p2p services, predating online viral video culture. By then it was a no brainer: this had to become a series, and Comedy Central made it so. Luckily Parker and Stone began to adopt proper storytelling techniques to turn this goofy series into one of the best examples of social satire in the twenty first century.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: Amusement Park Ride
One of the most obvious examples is Disney’s successful Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Please ignore the slog of films that came after and you may remind yourself that this first instalment isn’t actually so bad. In fact, it makes for a pretty good action blockbuster affair, and a bit of a miraculous adaptation when you consider its origins. It is based on a ride at various Disney parks, which initially bared very little resemblance from the film that would be released in 2003 (outside of having pirates). In the ride, you are caught amidst various pirate activities, including the looting of cities, canon fire between ships, and even the walking of planks by doomed scallywags. The fact that a full on story and journey was created is a bit astonishing. After the success of this franchise, Disney would create an animatronic for Captain Jack Sparrow so he would be a part of the ride as well (and at least there would be some sort of a connection between the source and its adaptation). We can continue to forget about the awful Haunted Mansion film, though (and I fear that the upcoming film won’t fare any better).
Safety Not Guaranteed: Newspaper Advertisement
Finally, we have this mind boggling source material for a hit indie film from the early 2010’s. The above advertisement in the classifieds went viral online for obvious reasons, and Colin Trevorrow wanted to dig into the mystery behind such a bizarre posting (who even wrote this? Who could write it?). For less than a million dollars, Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly provide their own face to the anonymous poster in Safety Not Guaranteed (titled after the most puzzling line in the ad), with a curious graduate journalist wanting to get to the source of this post, only to find the well-intentioned Kenneth Calloway (a fictional character, of course). What was an ad that was fun to poke fun at is now the source of substance and wonder, and you actually begin to root for Calloway and his attempts at time travel. The film provides its own answers for the ad, and this imaginative effort resulted in a push for indie cinema during this decade (particularly for star Mark Duplass, who was already an independent film star in his own right).
Bonus: Adaptation.-An Adaptation of the Adaptation Process
I do have to give a brief shout out to the adaptation of all adaptations, appropriately titled, well, Adaptation.. Charlie Kaufman’s bizarre take on the adaptation process — while he struggled to convert the prized novel The Orchid Thief into a film — results in this Spike Jonze film about the writing process. While there is a book at the heart of this film, the story really revolves around the creative process surrounding the screenwriting process, and that is why the film belongs on this list (depending on how you look at it). Charlie Kaufman split himself into two personalities (both played here by Nicolas Cage at his finest) to represent the halves of his brain: the writer that wants to make something new, and the lazier side that is fascinated by conventional storytelling. The film itself is a tug-of-war between these sides to try and convert this best selling book into a feature film (likely what Kaufman was feeling while trying to write this feature), and Adaptation. is a refreshing watch as a result. This isn’t an adaptation of a novel: it’s an adaptation of adaptation, and there really isn’t any other film quite like it.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.