Table Of ContentTELEVISION GOES TO THE MOVIES
Television and film have always been connected, but recent years have seen
them overlapping, collaborating, and moving towards each other in ever more
ways. Set amidst this moment of unprecedented synergy, this book examines
how television and film culture interact in the 21st century.
Both media appear side by side in many platforms or venues, stories and
storytellers cross between them, they regularly have common owners, and
they discuss each other constantly. Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson examine
what happens at these points of interaction, studying the imaginary border-
lands between each medium, the boundary maintenance that quickly envel-
ops much discussion of interaction, and ultimately what we allow or require
television and film to be. Offering separate chapters on television exhibition
at movie theaters, cinematic representations of television, television-to-film
and film-to-television adaptations, and television producers crossing over to
film, the book explores how each zone of interaction invokes fervid debate of
the roles that producers, audiences, and critics want and need each medium to
play. From Game of Thrones to The TV Set, Bewitched to the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, hundreds of TV shows and films are discussed.
Television Goes to the Movies will be of interest to students and scholars of tele-
vision studies, film studies, media studies, popular culture, adaptation studies,
production studies, and media industries.
Jonathan Gray is Hamel Family Distinguished Chair in Communication Arts
at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is author of Dislike-Minded: Media,
Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste, Television Studies (with Amanda D. Lotz),
Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts, Television Enter-
tainment, and Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality,
and co-editor of numerous books including Keywords for Media Studies (with
Laurie Ouellette) and A Companion to Media Authorship (with Derek Johnson).
Derek Johnson is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the Commu-
nication Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the
author of Transgenerational Media Industries: Adults, Children and the Reproduction
of Culture and Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the C ulture
Industries. He has also edited or co-edited several books, including most recently
From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels and Point of Sale: Analyz-
ing Media Retail (with Daniel Herbert).
TELEVISION GOES
TO THE MOVIES
Jonathan Gray and
Derek Johnson
First published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson to be identified as
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-47643-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-47644-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-10597-2 (ebk)
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by codeMantra
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Television Programs Go to the Movies: Crossing
Boundaries in Exhibition Spaces 20
2 Television’s Detractors Go to the Movies:
Cinematic Representations of Television 44
3 Television Stories Go to the Movies:
Strategies of Adaptation 72
4 Television Producers Go to the Movies:
Transforming Professional Identities 101
Coda: Let It Go? 131
Works Cited 135
Index 147
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We’d both like to begin by thanking the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foun-
dation and the University of Wisconsin-Madison for supporting some of the
research behind this book through an H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship and
a Vilas Mid-Career Investigator’s Award. We are also grateful to the Hamel
family for their generous support of our research.
The funds from these sources allowed us to hire three superb research assis-
tants. Jennifer Smith and Nicholas Benson each logged two summers worth of
watching media about media and adaptations, respectively, and their brilliant
notes and observations undergird Chapters 2 and 3. Laura Schumacher also
contributed by seeking out other touchpoints where film and television clash or
are at least imagined to clash. We offer our profuse thanks to all three.
Much of this book was written, though, while locked down during the
COVID-19 pandemic, so we’d like to direct most of our remaining thanks
to those who kept us company (and only a little insane) during hard times.
For Jonathan, that means Monica Grant and Abigail Gray; for Derek it means
Colleen, Dahlia, and Annika Johnson, as well as stalwart, socially distanced
running buddy Jeremy Morris; while for both of us it means the wonderful
porch pals and cocktail connoisseurs Jason Kido Lopez, Lori Kido Lopez, and
Mimsy. Knowing that Eric Hoyt was only a message away helped too. New
puppy Captain did very little to speed this book to its conclusion, but he was
appreciated nonetheless.
Together we’d like to dedicate the book to Michele Hilmes, someone we
wish we could’ve spent our lockdown with (even if that would’ve constituted a
flagrant violation of Bruce’s “three hour” rule). Michele has been our teacher,
mentor, colleague, friend, ace bartender, confidante, and role model, and
though we know that we could never balance our ledger of thanks with her,
we’ll try here nonetheless.
INTRODUCTION
On May 19, 2019, the final episode of Game of Thrones (2011–2019), “The
Iron Throne,” aired on HBO. Over its eight-year run, Game of Thrones had
regularly been called “cinematic” or even “the most cinematic television show
ever made” (Epstein 2016), a sentiment echoed when HBO Chairman and
CEO Richard Plepler spoke of the final season as much more like “six movies”
(Littleton 2019), and when showrunner David Benioff shared that the produc-
tion team had always considered the show like a “73 hour movie” (Hibberd
2017). Game of Thrones was not the only major finale that week in the United
States, though, as Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame (2019) was still in cinemas ev-
erywhere. For all its $2.8 billion command of the box office and for all the
sweeping effects that its $356 million budget bought it, though, in structure
and style Endgame felt very much like a television series finale, complete with
the tour through past episodes, return of past characters, and sad diegetic good-
byes standing in for presumed sad real-life goodbyes. That week in May thus
focused how loosely the labels of “film” or “television” may sit on their wearers,
and focuses a feeling many of us have probably had of late, that television and
film might be a lot more alike than we have been told was the case. Television
and film critics—and television and film professors—can prove overfond of
pitting the two media against each other as if rival sports teams, with each new
major achievement in either medium being read as a step closer to winning a
bowl, cup, or medal. Especially as critics, academics, and the public at large
have increasingly noted a “Second Golden Age” of television, an era of “peak
TV” in which television has finally begun to shake off its identity as the “idiot
box” or the “boob tube,” there is a sense of zero-sum competition in which the
plaudits enjoyed by one medium might come at the expense of another. But
they still have a lot in common, and the pathways between the media are both
well-traveled and multiplying.
