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8 Sci-Fi Movies That Would Make Great TV Shows

As we've explained elsewhere, Westworld is the latest hot ticket on television. A loose adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1973 movie about a robot theme park gone wrong, it's an ingenious 21st century update of the source material that keys into modern concerns and ideas, like artificial intelligence and the uncanny valley.

2) Cloverfield

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The Movies: 2008’s Cloverfield was an enjoyable entry in the found-footage genre, as a group of friends record an alien invasion of New York. In 2016, a tangential follow-up was released – 10 Cloverfield Lane. Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman, it was a tense thriller about a woman who is kidnapped by a man claiming that the apocalypse has occurred. Producer J.J. Abrams has said that he hopes to continue the Cloverfield saga in a series of separate movies linked by common themes. Like a big screen version of The Twilight Zone.

The TV Show: While it would be fascinating to see an anthology film series, as such a thing has never really been pulled off successfully, a more natural home for Abrams’ idea is TV. Anthology shows are in vogue at the moment – from the traditional weekly structure of Black Mirror to the ‘new story every season’ approach of American Horror Story and True Detective.    

A Cloverfield show could fit either mold, but a season-long story would probably be most effective. Much like the two films seen so far, each run could take a look at the alien invasion from different perspectives, all working together to enrich one single storytelling universe but without being too dependent on each other.