25 Movies That Would Have Been BETTER As TV Shows
7. The Many Saints Of Newark
Serenity isn't the only film on this list coming off the back of a TV series, though the circumstances here couldn't have been much more different. While Firefly was a cult hit cancelled after one season, The Sopranos is widely regarded as one of the greatest shows of all time. Frankly, that it took this long to produce a spin-off is astounding.
The Many Saints of Newark offered a look at a young Tony Soprano, benefited by the most perfect casting possible. Michael Gandolfini played the character his father James portrayed for six seasons, and excelled in the role.
Much like with Serenity, it felt as though, as a concept, this had more legs than just a two-hour film. Cramming the story into a single outing only hurt the project, and though a look into the early years of Tony Soprano is something that any fan of the show would surely have wanted to see, the reception was lukewarm at best.
To put this into the context of another all-time great TV show, had The Many Saints of Newark been produced as a TV series rather than a good-not-great film, it could have been The Sopranos' Better Call Saul rather than its El Camino.