12 Movies You Didn’t Realise Were Originally TV Shows

11. U.S. Marshals

People often forget that 1998's U.S. Marshals was based on a television series - mostly because they forget that U.S. Marshals exists. It's one of those middling, also-ran movies that wasn't terrible but didn't blow audiences away either. A sequel to the big screen version of The Fugitive from 1993, which fans very clearly remember as adapted from the hit 1960s television show of the same name, U.S. Marshals focused on Tommy Lee Jones' U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard and his attempts to track down another fugitive from justice - only this time it's not Harrison Ford as Richard Kimble, but Wesley Snipes playing a brand new escaped convict. The film also features Robert Downey Jr. before his return to public grace as another Marshal on the case. U.S. Marshals was written by Roy Huggins, who also created the original Fugitive series, the 1993 film with Ford, and the television series Maverick. In short, he knew the Gerard character well enough to mine it for another movie, and tried to recreate the forumla of success, but fan interest waned. Really the only link between the film and The Fugitive television show was Samuel Gerard - named Phillip in the 1960s show, and a police detective ranked Lieutenant, not a Marshal. And simply put, that character wasn't what made the series great, which led to viewers barely realising the two properties were linked.