West Nile, Swine Flu, Meningitis, and Sequelitis

[Drtooth]

Nah. Kung Fu Panda had 2 movies and a Nickelodeon series that ran for three seasons before they dumped it. I'm really looking forward to this one, especially since the second film couldn't have been a bigger sequel hook at the end. I just have to say... January?!?! Really!?! Sure, they didn't have a sure fire string of hits recently (HTTYD2 made more than they care to think), but January is only kind to cheaply made movies for kids to shut them up. Which brings me to...

Nut Job 2 was pretty much announced the weekend it opened and made it's extremely low budget back (which is why that Norm of the North thing bothers me... seriously, it's animation level is lower than a TV show, and the TV show has to deal with weekly budgets). It's on Netflix. I keep threatening myself to sit through it to see if it really is terrible, but I haven't even see The Warriors yet, and it's in my que. Yeah. I didn't even bother to see a movie I insanely wanted to see, so something to complain about will have to wait. Other than it's lucky dump month release, there's no draw. In the endless string of movies staring with megahit Frozen and concluding with Lego (Peabody and Sherman and MMW both petered out in a slow, overcrowded March), that stupid farting squirrel thingy from South Korea (where all our animation comes from) managed to be a sleeper hit due to the low budget and lucky as heck timing. If it were released any other month, it would have fallen like that stupid Wizard of Oz cartoon. That awful Gnome movie managed to luck out in that time frame during a regional vacation as well. Strange Magic was immune. Obviously cuz George Lucas had his name all over it.

 

[snichols1973]

The Beethoven franchise definitely qualifies for sequelitis with the 1st film, followed by the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, Beethoven's Big Break (#6), Beethoven's Christmas Adventure (#7), Beethoven's Treasure Tail (#8), and a CBS Saturday morning series.....

 

[snichols1973]

Kung Fu Panda 3, which is scheduled to be released on 1/29/2016, features Bryan Cranston, best known as Breaking Bad's Walter White, as Li Shan, Po's real father, who previously appeared at the end of KFP2.

Randall Duk Kim returns as Oogway, Kate Hudson (Glee's Cassandra July) appears as Mei Mei, Po's fiancee from a pre-arranged marriage contract, Pierce Gagnon as Bao, with J.K. Simmons (Oz's Vernon Schillinger) as Kai, the antagonist.

Po reunites with his biological father and travels with him to a secret sanctuary of pandas where, to his surprise, he does not fit in. There he meets Mei Mei, an overly eager panda, who had been promised to Po through an arranged marriage when they were children. To make matters worse, an evil ancient spirit called Kai begins terrorizing China and stealing the powers of defeated kung fu masters. Now, in the face of incredible odds, Po must learn to train a village of clumsy, fun-loving pandas to become a band of Kung Fu Pandas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_Panda_3

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

So in the months to come, we're looking forward to:

- MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2 (uh, how long ago was the first one?)
- THE NUT JOB 2 (was the first one even good?)
- KUNG FU PANDA 3 (didn't they already do three movies?)

Regarding the MBFGW sequel, I notice everybody is making the same complaint I've been making about ICE AGE for years: the first one was fine as a stand-alone feature, sequeling was completely unnecessary. Granted, I've never actually watched MBFGW, but that's what I've been saying about ICE AGE.

Kung Fu Panda had two movies,a tv show and a few specials. As for MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, I knew the movie was pretty popular but I didn't know that it was popular enough to get a sequel 13 years later.

 

[Drtooth]

Big Fat Greek Wedding had a very unpopular TV show that they thought would be an easy win. It wasn't good. Even Andrea Martin couldn't save it.

I'm just puzzled as to why it needs a sequel. Comedy sequels are very much hit or miss, and often in the miss category. Especially if it's one of those longstanding sequels of a movie that's a decade or more old. I don't see any surprise like Jurassic World (which is considered better than the actual sequels) and Mad Max Fury Road, especially from a comedy.

 

[D'Snowth]

Big Fat Greek Wedding had a very unpopular TV show that they thought would be an easy win. It wasn't good. Even Andrea Martin couldn't save it.

With the exception of M*A*S*H, and arguably THE ODD COUPLE (I say "arguably," because that show was canceled and uncanceled every year because of poor ratings during first-run, but slightly better ratings during summer reruns), has there ever been a successful sitcom that was adapted from a hit movie?

 

[Drtooth]

Both of those cases were special, I feel. They managed to make the jump from original medium (book and play) to movie to television quite well without exhausting the concept early on. BFGW was not one of those things that made the jump. It went from loving ethnic romantic comedy to wacky neighbors/in-laws sitcom, losing a lot of itself in the process, even with the main cast. Plus, it resorted to cheaper, more obvious laughs as a TV show.

Movies usually make better cartoon shows than sitcoms. Arguably decent hour long dramas. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was better known and remembered as a TV show than a film, and the Fargo series on FX is pretty good.

 

[charlietheowl]

With the exception of M*A*S*H, and arguably THE ODD COUPLE (I say "arguably," because that show was canceled and uncanceled every year because of poor ratings during first-run, but slightly better ratings during summer reruns), has there ever been a successful sitcom that was adapted from a hit movie?

I guess you could count Alice from Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, but from what I've read (haven't seen the movie, though it's supposed to be good), the movie was more of a dramedy compared to the goofy sitcom.

 

[D'Snowth]

You may have a point there: because on a similar note, both the original novel and movie of M*A*S*H, and the original play and movie of THE ODD COUPLE were dark, black comedies, whereas the sitcoms were more lighthearted (well, the former got darker and preachier in its last few seasons, but whatever). Plus, I guess it's easier for an incarnation of THE ODD COUPLE to be successful, since the play had different people playing Felix and Oscar anyway.

But I actually didn't know ALICE originated as a movie. . . . then again, I've never actually seen ALICE; I don't think it's ever been on TV Land, or MeTV, or any of these retro channels, I only know about it for Alice's trademark catchphrase, "Kiss mah grits!"

 

[D'Snowth]

So another sequel after all these years: another Barbershop movie. On top of that, it's another one of those "save the neighborhood" movies, so that makes it doubley unnecessary, because how many times have we seen that plot?