CINEMA: Made-From-Tv Movies

• Share

If what you're about to read doesn't make you sick at heart about creativity in Hollywood, then you may as well queue up now for that future film smash, Love Connection: The Movie.

Well, all right, perhaps we are overreacting. Perhaps it is just the seasonal malaise that afflicts film critics, but not moviegoers, as we anticipate the pack mentality of Hollywood that in summer always produces a few hot-weather hits but many more dog-day dogs -- worse, the same breed of dog. This is the season when studio bosses roll out their biggest theories as to what genre the audience will consume in mass quantities. In 1991, action adventure; '92, comedy; '93, kid stuff. And now Naked Trend 4: TV shows turned into movies.

Hollywood's summer officially began last weekend with the box-office sure thing Maverick, starring Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster and the lead from the '50s TV version, old Bret (or was it Bart?) Maverick himself, James Garner. This week a live-action take on The Flintstones debuts, with John Goodman and Elizabeth Perkins as Fred and Wilma Flintstone and Rick Moranis and Rosie O'Donnell as Barney and Betty Rubble. Later this summer, Lassie will bark her way back into your heart, and Wyatt Earp will gallop across the wide screen. The Little Rascals, based on the old movie shorts that have become continually rerun TV artifacts, arrives in August. Then summer's end brings It's Pat, a Saturday Night Live spin-off.

And the projects just keep on coming, as studios ransack America's collective subliterate unconscious for new hits from old shows: American Gladiators (with Cliffhanger's Renny Harlin producing); Bewitched (Penny Marshall); The Brady Bunch; F Troop; Gentle Ben; Gilligan's Island; Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.; The Green Hornet; Hawaii Five-0; Hogan's Heroes (from writer- producer John Hughes); The Invaders; Lost in Space; My Favorite Martian; The Rifleman; The Saint and many, many more.

Some of these projects will surely end up in development hell (or at least development limbo). Others will be made only to receive the who-cares / reception that greeted The Gong Show Movie, The Nude Bomb (from Get Smart), Boris and Natasha (from Rocky and his Friends), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and this year's Car 54, Where Are You? But enough of these tele-visions will emulate the smash status of last year's The Fugitive or at least achieve the same modest earnings as The Beverly Hillbillies to give Hollywood what it wants most: a solid, safe return on its investment. Ask producer Alan Ladd Jr. about his low-budget (about $12 million) version of The Brady Bunch, and he will spell it out in numbers: "The risk factor isn't high. It will get a decent opening weekend, at worst, and do well in home video. Nobody gets hurt, and there is a huge upside if it works."