.png){kind=logo}
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Nerds explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
TV: Where Horror Franchises Go to Die
We pull the curtain on what happens when iconic slashers, demons, and haunted houses try to survive network constraints, syndication deals, and the long tail of serialized storytelling. From cursed antiques pitched as Friday the 13th to Freddy Krueger moonlighting as a wisecracking host, we map the distance between brand recognition and actual fear.
We start with the bait-and-switches: Friday The 13th: The Series builds a curiosities procedural with zero Jason; Freddy’s Nightmares promises lore, then delivers scattered anthology entries dulled by shoestring budgets; Poltergeist: The Legacy trades domestic dread for secret-society casework. Then we pivot to the exceptions that actually land. The Exorcist honors the 1973 classic with a tense, character-led investigation, only to be tripped by Friday scheduling. Scream shows how one choice—the Ghostface mask—can fracture a fandom, even as later seasons sharpen the writing. Hannibal ascends to high art with operatic psychology and lavish imagery, yet rights and platform mismatches undercut its momentum. And Bates Motel demonstrates the winning formula: focus the lens on character, build pressure season by season, and let the performances carry the myth.
Along the way we talk budgets, censorship, licensing, first-run syndication, and the invisible hand of distribution that can doom or save a show. The takeaway is simple: film-to-TV horror works when it protects core iconography, leads with character, and fits the platform’s reality; it fails when a famous title is glued to a mismatched premise or neutered by constraints. If you care about how fear translates from a two-hour shock to a multi-season slow burn, this one’s for you. Enjoy the ride, then tell us your favorite or most painful adaptation, and don’t forget to follow, rate, and share to keep the conversation going.
When television is good, nothing. Not the theater, not the magazines, or the newspapers, nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there for a day without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland. That comes from Newton Norman Minnow. In a speech given to the National Association of Broadcasters Convention on May 9th, 1961. He was the chairman of the FCC. And now a second quote. Television. That's where movies go when they die. That's from Bob Hope in his opening monologue of the Oscars on March 19, 1953. There's likely few more fitting metaphors for today's topic than of the fate of Jennifer Caulfield from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Dream Warriors, which, following the events of part two, finds Jennifer under the care of Dr. Neil Gordon at Weston Hills Psychiatric Hospital. She, along with Kristen Parker, Will Stanton, Taryn White, and Joey Kursil, are the last of the Elm Street kids, i.e., the only children stalked by Freddy Krueger left alive. In that scene, Max, an orderly at the hospital, warns Jennifer, who wants to be a TV actress, about watching too much TV, and she says and says she should read a book instead. She insists on watching to keep her entertained and awake, but her tiredness gets the best of her. In her death scene, she is literally pulled into a television by Freddy and summarily slaughtered. The reason that is so fitting is because we've shown over and over again that turning horror films into TV shows is a fool's errand. Welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. I'm Skip. Yes, I did this because I went down a rabbit hole of really strange, sort of in the vein of our episodes about monsters and about Tales from the Dark Side, other horror shows that sort of cropped up during that era. That's why I discovered things like Friday the 13th series, Freddy's Nightmares, Poltergeist The Legacy. And so I thought I would break down why, or at least how, most of those interpretations of franchises, horror franchises specifically, being turned into television sucks real hard. Oh, at least two of those aren't related. I'll explain. There are exceptions, and some of them are legitimately good. Most of them are recent, but even the good ones aren't well known. We're gonna start with Friday the 13th, the series. It was created by Frank Mancuso Jr. and Larry B. Williams. The thing is, it was originally called The 13th Hour, because it's not related to Friday the 13th at all. It ran for 72 episodes, which is actually pretty good. Mancuso Jr. never intended the show to be linked to Friday the 13th at all, but the studio wanted to utilize the idea of Friday the 13th, which is that it symbolizes bad luck and curses. And so the production company that headed it up wanted to tie in Jason's hockey mask into the series, which is kind of crazy because that didn't even show up until the end of the third movie. They kind of dismissed that if they're going to have to adopt this name and this moniker, they're just gonna let it stand for itself. Already you're kind of at conflict with your own concept now because of the interference by the studio. Mancuso Jr. was afraid that mentioning any events from the films would take the audience away from the world he was trying to create. So the decision to name the show Friday the 13th was because he believed that a Friday the 13th moniker would better help to sell the show to networks. This was all in syndication, first run syndication. We talked a little bit about this in our episodes about Star Trek and about what was it that uh but like Hercules and Xena and all that kind of stuff. Those were all syndication. Okay. The first run syndication doesn't really exist anymore. I mean, it does, but only for mid-afternoon talk shows. The first syndication run shows were basically just not produced by an actual network. They were done by studios and then shopped around. That's how Star Trek, DS9, Voyager, TNG were all first run syndication. Enterprise was the first one that was run again by a network because UPN still existed back then. But in this era, you didn't get you had no studio support and you had to sell your show to a network. Even Desi Lu Studios, they did a lot of first-round syndication stuff. Because back then, production studios ran everything. But they figured if they named it Friday the 13th, maybe it would be more appealing to a network to pick it up. Um Right. I remember checking it out too, like very briefly. This was around the same time of the, you know, the success of things like Creep Show and Tales from the Dark Side, and you know, later monsters, but there was a glut of these kinds of things happening at this point. That all of the items are cursed. So they're already kind of like evoking like needful things kind of thing, or there are a lot of tropes about this, like you know, you know, a cabinet of curiosities type situation, or each item in there has its own story.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm. So then they work together to recover said objects after they've been bought, and then return them safely to the shop's vault. After Lewis's death, his shop is inherited by his niece, Mickey Foster, who's played by Louise Roby, and her cousin Ryan Dalian, played by John D. Lemay. They don't want to keep the store, and they sell off many of the cursed antiques before they're stopped by Jack Marshak, who is Lewis's childhood friend, a retired stage magician, world traveler, and occultist, who originally collected many of the antiques before they became cursed. It's like the Warren's The Next Generation. The Warren's babies. So the show follows those protagonists as they hunt down these cursed antiques, which are usually in possession of people who have discovered their magic powers and are unwilling to give them up, and they want to use them for some sort of nefarious purpose or whatever. Every episode they kind of like do the whole they get it back, there's an ironic punishment or what have you. Then they get them back and they bring them back to the store where they put them in a vault because these objects are oftentimes indestructible. You can't just throw it in a fire or chuck it in the trash. So they do a Ghostbusters type thing and they lock them in a vault, which is designed specifically to render the objects inert in the object's powers. The magic that it that the object generates or uses is no longer effective. And you know, and then they have a a big part of it is that they have a manifest that was written by Lewis, who holds a huge list of all of the things. Basically, he's just a documentary and watcher type character. Yeah, well, I could go into some of the episodes, but who cares? The show ran for what three seasons in syndication. To be honest, I think the reason it was canceled was mostly because they're not in direct control of what network buys them up. So there's no network coming down on them saying you're canceled. It's just that no one would pick it up again, essentially. It kind of ran its course. It wasn't based on Friday the 13th. And Friday the 13th movies were coming out at that time. It was a little confusing, people were not into it at that point. When that aired, during that point in which that aired, Jason takes Manhattan had come out in 1989. They did that in Waxwork too, didn't they? Oh, it's definitely proto-supernatural, Monster of the Week stuff. Like proto, no, what's the Grim Warehouse thirteen or that other one? Dresden Files. But the show kind of ran its course. Uh funny enough though, Mancuso Jr. also produced Friday the 13th, part two, all the way through Friday the 13th, Jason Takes Manhattan in 1989. A year before the series ended. And some of the actors, like John D. LeMay, who played Ryan, he went on to star in Jason Goes to Hell, The Final Friday, not the same character. And one of the guest stars, John Shepherd, played Tommy Jarvis in Friday the 13th, A New Beginning. And one of the episode directors was David Cronenberg, who then also appeared as an actor in Jason X. I know. It's just like when Cronenberg was a character in Star Trek. That's weird. So we don't have to get into too much of the details. You can see it, it's kind of online. It's a show that happened. It has nothing to do with Jason Voorhees, it has nothing to do with Crystal Lake. But it kind of fits more into the Halloween 3 season of the Witch scenario, where these big franchises could have done Monster of the Week stuff. Halloween didn't need to be just about Michael Myers. And in Halloween 3, they kind of proved that. Halloween 3 has over time gotten a huge cult following, and Honesty's is more well regarded than when it came out. Especially looking back on how many terrible fucking Michael Myers movies came out after that. The Halloween series as a franchise could have been great if it were Monster of the Week as a movie franchise. Or at least a slasher of the week or a horror of the week type. Which is what the X-File should have done, by the way. Yes, in movie form. If they were going to continue in movie form, they should have been Monster of the Week, not chasing down this terrible Chris Carter bullshit that didn't go anywhere and doesn't make any sense. That they abandoned and then came back to, and then ugh. Right, oh you mean like the first X-Res movie? Sure. Yeah, that's what it felt like. Let's move on to. Oh man, this is unfortunate. So in preparation for this, I watched several episodes of this yesterday. Freddy's Nightmare. I'm sorry, Freddy's Nightmares. Well, I mean, that's kind of the premise. A lot of people refer to it as a nightmare on Elm Street the series, but the official name, and this is so funny, the official name of the show, as seen on graphics while I was watching the show, Freddy's Nightmares, Colonel A Nightmare on Elm Street, Colonel the series. How many colons do you need?
unknown:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:As a personal anecdote, this show was an anthology series, weirdly enough, from also in First Run Syndication from October 8th, 1988 until March 12th, 1990. Each episode was introduced by Freddie Krueger, played by Robert Anglin. The interesting structure of it is that each episode featured two stories. The first half hour would be one story, the second half hour would be a different story. That part really doesn't matter, it's just how they formatted it. The first episode actually features Freddy before the events of the original Nightmare in Elm Street. It's directed by Toby Hooper, who of course did Texas Chainsaw Massacre and sort of kind of directed poltergeist, even though Steel Steven Spielberg was over his shoulder the entire time. And it's really bizarre because obviously those movies are extremely graphic. They're very violent. I mean, Johnny Depp exploding into a column of blood is, I mean, pretty explicitly violent, but somehow they figured out how to make it a ready for TV not censored show where they actually explore in the first episode the crowd mentality, the uh the the lynch mob that kills Freddie Krueger. I don't know why you think that would work in like a PG format. That seems a little bizarre to me, but the weird thing is that the show starts out with showing the origin of Freddie, which they have shown, and so when you watch the show, you'd think like, oh, this whole show is going to be the origin of how we get to where we are later. And if that show were made today, that's exactly what it would be. Instead, only a handful of episodes from then on actually feature Freddy. It's essentially an anthology show. That's exactly what he does. He becomes the Crypt Keeper. He introduces these and has commentary between act breaks and introducing each episode. It was produced by Newline Television and Stone Television. It was originally distributed by Lorimar Telepictures, which, if you're Jake and Isaac, we have seen the title cards for that a thousand times. After Lorimar Telepictures was acquired by Wonder Brothers in 1989, War Brothers assumed the syndication rights. Then in 1996, Warner Brothers acquired Newline Cinema, so they held both the production and distribution rights. So if they wanted to make more episodes and put them out, they were the only people who could. So New Line Cinema, which had originally put out Nightmare on Elm Street, they didn't want to make a series with a regular cast of characters interacting with Freddie because they felt like, well, he's going to kill them. What's the conflict there? That does make sense. But they also didn't want to do an anthology series in its normal sense. So they decided to do the Cryptkeeper type approach instead. Each episode does take a different story, but they all take place, well, at least originally, take place in the town of Springwood, Ohio, and on Elm Street. I watched an episode the other day with it actually has a fuck ton of people in this show. You know what the funny thing is? I was going to say that exact phrase. God damn it. Yes, with Lori Petty as a as a track star in high school in competition with, well, another big 80s and 90s bit actress. Name we can't remember now, but the entire premise is that it's something about how her mom was an athlete and died during, I guess, her whatever her. Okay, well, you say that. Lori Petty somehow finds this crystal amulet thing. You do randomly, right? She every time she like looks through it and then like daydreams, whatever she daydreams about, which is usually revenge plots, they actually happen, but you don't see, just like with Nightmare on Elm Street movies, they happen in their mind, and then that person ends up dying. At one point, she like wants her history teacher or whatever to shut up, and then so during her little spell generates cotton that keeps coming out of his mouth, and he can't get it out fast enough to keep from choking, and he dies on the floor. The logic is fast and loose. Let's just say that. Then hilariously, in the in the episode, her rival is faster than her. She beats her at like the I don't know, 100 meter or whatever. They don't really say. When she gets this amulet, she finally has the confidence to win and to beat her rival. And then at one point, her boyfriend takes away the crystal because he's like, Well, I know you can do this on your own. And so they do the next track meet, which is supposed to be the trials to make varsity or whatever. And she and her rival race, and you know, they have a ribbon at the end of the race, and that ribbon, because she doesn't have the crystal and because she's done certain things that have killed people, it takes her head off. She went straight into it and she gets decapitated. Which, of course, is in her mind because that's how the logic of Nightmare on Elm Street works. When they cut to real life, she's actually fallen and broken her neck on some sort of like football training equipment or whatever. It didn't really make a lot of sense, but I see where they were going. They were trying to say that in the Friday the 13th movies, there is a logic setup. I don't think it's very well followed in any of those movies, but there is a logic setup, and within it, you can play with these different concepts and ideas that have nothing to do with Freddy. Unfortunately, the show is very poorly regarded. It's considered one of the worst horror TV shows of all time. No one really likes it, no one watched it. I didn't know it existed. Basically, it was just bad. And most of it had nothing to do with Freddy. However, there were a lot of really cool guest stars in the show. There were people like Mariska Harkaday from Law and Order SVU, John Cameron Mitchell, who did uh Headbug in the Angry Inch, Brad Pitt, yeah, he was in there. Obviously Lori Petty, Marco Lemo, who was Gold Ducot on DS9, Sandal Bergman from Conan, who's also from Overland Park, by the way. Jeffrey Combs, George Lazenby, a James Bond, in one movie. That fucking counts. It's actually a pretty good James Bond movie. Well, it's an entertaining James Bond movie. I don't know if it's good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:At least 25, yeah. So, John Kenneth Muir in his book Terror Television places Freddy's Nightmares as the worst of the horror television programs between 1970 and 1999. I know that's very specific. He found the series having uninteresting stories, and that its production was so low that it appeared to be homemade and it completely wasted the talents of Robert Angbland, which I kind of, after watching it, I have to agree with. It's extremely low budget. It's do you ever see Overdrawn at the Memory Bank with Raoul Julia that they did on a MSD 3K? It's in that vein. It's really, really, really, really low budget. Not good. I tried, it's bad. It's it's hard to watch. Especially since they don't, you know, they start off with the Freddy thing and then don't continue it. Then don't do it. You know what I mean? Don't make your first episode the epic adventures of Freddy Krueger, and then stop. And even that episode doesn't work. It's not good. If you think the other nightmare in Elm Street movies are low budget and low rent, you've never seen the floor. Alright, the next is Poltergeist The Legacy. Oh boy. I have spent a long time watching this. Yeah, it sucks. It ran on Showtime from April 21st, 1996 to August 21st, 1998, and then later on the Sci-Fi Channel. It basically follows members of a secret society known as The Legacy and their efforts to protect mankind from occult danger. So we're talking Hickman's Shield. We're talking The Watchers. Also syndicated, but on Showtime, after its third season, it was canceled, but Sci-Fi Channel picked it up and continued for another season. The idea is that the ruling house is like their main base or whatever, and it's located in London. And in the sixth century, the legacy was established to collect dangerous and ancient knowledge and artifacts, solve paranormal problems, and protect humanity from supernatural evils. Over time, the membership expanded around the world. I mean, there's a lot of these. I mean, maybe back then it was breaking new ground, or at least, I don't know, relatively new, but we've seen this shit a lot in key culture over the last like uh. Good question. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Except Freddie Symmares was about Freddie Krueger. He was at least involved. Jason Voorhees never showed up in Friday the thirteenth. Though it is the only one in that sense of that era that actually did tie into its original source material. So I don't know what that says. But Freddy's Nightmares at least adhere to the branding in a way that instead of just being co-opted by the brand. And Robert England was in every episode, at least as the host. I mean, at least it has that, but it is also worse than either of those other shows. It's not good. No. When it comes to uh Poltergeist The Legacy, it did get cancelled, obviously, but there were talks where Sci-Fi Channel was gonna pick it up in 2000. In fact, they had put out there that they they were putting a possible show out called Poltergeist The Beginning, and they started pre-production in like 2001, but they never materialized, and Sci-Fi abandoned it in 2002, which it's around the time they were in re-production for Battlestar Galactica, so I think they chose wisely with that. Now that's not to say that every version of this is bad. Sometimes horror movies turned into TV shows actually work, at least to some extent. For instance, The Exorcist The Series, created by Jeremy Slater for Fox, is a direct sequel to the original 1973 film and ignores the film's, let's say troubled sequels at best. Alfonso Herrera and Ben Daniels star as a pair of exorcists who investigate cases of demonic possession. It's kind of a cop body movie type scenario, but for exorcists. Yes. Well, and they also reference characters in the first film. Because I've seen it. I actually really I personally enjoyed the show. The first season, at least. Max Vonsido's character, they actually referenced, but he's dead, you know, the in in the show. Well, uh not not really. I mean it's like, well, it doesn't really matter. It premiered in September of 2016. The second season premiered in September 2017, each having 10 episodes. But unfortunately, before the due date of its renewal, it was canceled in 2018. It was conceived as, and this is a quote from Jeremy Slater, who wrote the pilot quote, a propulsive, serialized psychological thriller following two very different men tackling one family's case of horrifying demonic possession and current confronting the face of true evil. It actually had rave reviews and won a bunch of awards, but it was on Fox, on Network TV, and on Friday nights, which is kind of I know what Fox thinks they were doing because the X-Viles originally was on Friday nights, and that worked, but since then that has not been the way that those kinds of shows work. It was 30 years before. In the second season, even though the first season it was okay ratings-wise, the second season averaged very, very poorly. It rated very poorly on the Nelson. Who even uses that anymore? But basically they got rid of it. But that's Fox for you. I mean, because the rest of development got canceled after three seasons, even though it won fuck tons of awards. No one knew it existed. Which is actually going to be a thread throughout the next of these shows. Scream the TV series, developed by Jill Lotegvol. Scream the TV series, developed by Jill Blotovegel, Dan Dworkin, and Jay Batty for MTV, and then Brett Matthews for VH1. Boy, we're gonna have to get into that. Was a series produced by Dimension Television. And MTV. In its first two seasons, it was set in a fictional version of the town of Lakewood, Colorado. And it followed the travails of Emma Duvall, a teenager who was linked to horrific events in the town's past. The killer's obsession starts to take hold after a brutal murder in the present. Emma finds herself in the center of the conflict. I mean, it's kind of, you know, you know how it goes. Whatever. That's two seasons.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Oh boy, are we gonna get to this? Yes, I'm gonna get to it in just a second. I promise. Then let's go off. It also has a third season, which follows the story of a guy named Dion Elliott, a local football star in Atlanta, who's tormented by other things he's done in his past, yada yada yada. The show originally premiered in the summer of 2015 and was renewed for a second season very quickly. Then in November of 2015, it was announced that the showrunners would be stepping down due to creative differences. This is a red flag. Michael Gantz and Richard Richard Register doesn't sound like a real name, replaced them for the second season. And then in October 2016, MTV renewed the series for a six-episode third season and announced the showrunners would be replaced again. And in April 2017, MTV announced that Queen Latifa would be an executive producer for the third season through her production company Flavor Unit Entertainment. I did not know that was a thing. It was announced then also that the series would transition into being an anthology series, and this time on VH1, and be renamed Scream Resurrection. All of these are good signs. So audiences kind of knew from the first trailer that the show was doomed, because let's be honest, the Scream Mask is now one of the most iconic horror visuals, right?
SPEAKER_01:Ghostface.
SPEAKER_00:That doesn't work. So for some reason, MTV made a creative decision to introduce a new killer with a new mask. Not the ghost face mask. You can't hear the face palm, but the original screen director, Wes Craven, says he let MTV use his name in association with the series in the form of executive producer, but he actually had little involvement. Initially, he expressed his approval of the redesign of the mask and hinted at its origins and possible plot significance. So, like what they were doing is they were going out there and they were they were touting the idea that the reason the mask was different had to do with the plot that was to unfold. That didn't work, and no one cared. And also, I don't necessarily think that it was genuine that that was that that was their actual reasoning. Initially, Craven expressed his approval of the redesign. However, he eventually walked that back when critical reviews of the show became less than cheery. Quote, in general, we didn't mess with the mask at all. It's something we didn't try to change. When Freddie Krueger and the New Nightmare, I felt I probably should have stuck with the original face, because they changed his face a little bit for New Nightmare. With Scream, we just let Ghost Face be Ghost Face. Sometimes you realize that something's not broken, so don't fix it. And that was the course we took on all Scream films. Don't mess with it. It's perfect. I knew it in my bones that Ghostface was a unique find, and I had to convince the studio that they had to go an extra mile to get it. And the reason for that is it was created by a New York-based novelty company called Fun World in 1991. The original what we can now call Ghostface mask was first conceived as a Halloween costume mask, obviously, by a woman named Bridget Slayerton Linden. And the look was mostly inspired by the ghosts from some of those old 1930s black and white Max Fleischer cartoons, and a little bit from Betty Boop. It was then mass-produced for years as part of what Funworld called the Fantastic Faces Pack, and then later licensed by the Weinstein Company, who produced Scream. Now, Funworld VP Alan Geller claims that he created it himself. Okay. Well, it just sounds like an asshole trying to like discredit a woman. MTV insists that the change was simply a creative decision to take the franchise into, quote, a darker, more modern direction. This comes from Mina Lefebvre in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, quote, if the screen movie mask was the more plastic version, this one is a more organic looking and frankly darker version. So it sounds like PR. Rumors persist that MTV just didn't want to pay for the licensing from either Funworld or through the Weinstein Company. Yep, yeah. Yeah, something rings true. Now, season one of the show got 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, 57% score on Metacred. Not bad, really, I guess. No, not great. Season two received a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Which is incredible. Yeah. But the problem was that nobody actually watched the show. That's kind of the through line through all of these series. Unfortunately, for season three, where they had more upheaval, it got a 40% Rotten Tomatoes, so it's not great. In an article on comicbook.com, man, I wish we had had the foresight to snag that domain name years ago. Writer Kathleen Delgado wrote, There was something different about it. The youthful vibe, the quick cuts, and the discussions about digital identity and cancel culture, even in an early form, hinted that this production was trying to do something bold. It wanted to be more than just a generic slasher. It wanted to be relevant, but the timing, execution, and behind-the-scenes drama doomed it. What was supposed to be a contemporary revival ended up being a strange, unstable, and ultimately forgotten experiment. The movies in the franchise work perfectly in two hours, but in a serialized format, the pace and depth of the characters require much more care, something that the adaptations didn't always get right. That is your middle ground. And now we're gonna get to the actually good. The top tier. I always just wish it was Michelson. Because I wanted Michael Madsen and Mads Michelson to start a sitcom together where they live together called My Two Mads. My Two Mads is never gonna happen. Oh man. Yeah, he died. Yeah, he died.
unknown:Fuck.
SPEAKER_00:And this is how weird this show got. Spanish American chef and restaurateur Jose Andres was tapped as the series, quote, culinary cannibal consultant, and advised the crew on proper procedure for preparing human flesh for consumption. That's real. Yep. Who knows what long pig tastes like? It's like getting Rachel Ray to tell you how to cook your dog. She's got all that dog food out there. The series premiered on NBC in April of 2013. Its first two seasons won the Saturn Awards for Best Network Television Series, while both Mickelson and Dancy won Best Actor, with Lawrence Fishburning Best Supporting Actor for season two. In the third and final season, the show won the inaugural Best Action Thriller TV Series Award, which sounds extremely specific, while guest star Richard Armitage won Best Supporting Actor. Now there is a list, if you go on their like Wikipedia, there's an enormous list of awards that the show won, or at least was nominated for, and it's extensive. It only won for a handful, even though those are impressive. It was nominated like a thousand times for nearly every category. It's extremely well regarded by critics. Brian Fuller originally planned for the show to run for seven seasons. The first three of original stuff, the fourth covering Red Dragon, or Manhunter, depending on what you like, the fifth covering Silence of the Lambs, and the sixth covering Hannibal. And then the seventh would be another additional original storyline. However, after the second season, and I'm guessing this is a lot to do with network interference, Fuller stated that he envisioned the show to run six seasons all of a sudden, incorporating the books differently than he originally planned. Then season three would use materials from Hannibal Rising as well as Red Dragon, and to include a different origin story for Dr. Lecter. And that season also eventually adapted elements from the book Hannibal. He knew the right wings on the wall. It was not going to go seven seasons. He intended to include other characters from the book, including, for instance, Clarice Starling, if he could obtain rights from MGM, which he never did. In a touch of irony, and if anybody's ever listened to the show, and I don't want to have to explain this again, Gillian Anderson was cast as Dr. Lecter psychiatrist. Kudos to you, sir. Kudos. Originally, NBC executives had pushed for John Cusack or Hugh Grant to be cast as Hannibal Lecter. John okay, John Cusack? No. After watching Heretic, I'm kinda like and also like, I don't know, basically everything John Q I mean, everything if Hugh Grant has done in the last like 15 years. Okay? Maybe?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay, explain.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he's the aweshocks. Well, he's talking to you, scratching his eyebrow because he's nervous talking to you boyfriend thing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah. Spoiler alert.
SPEAKER_00:Wait, which one? Because he's he's also in the Man from Uncle, and he's great in that too. He's the MI6 head in Man from Uncle.
SPEAKER_01:Robin Williams famously did it.
SPEAKER_00:A lot of actors have tried this, yeah. Fuller originally planned for the show to run seven seasons, like we said. The studio wanted Hugh Grant or John Husack, which is ridiculous. Even though, like we were just talking about, Hugh Grant did have a renaissance, mostly to attract views. I mean, it wasn't about anything other than the fact that James Spader had just started the Blacklist, which is kind of the template that that NBC was looking for. Because the blacklist, who cares if that show was good or not? It did well. Spader was in it, and so they kind of figured, let's go with that. Interestingly enough, David Tennett had auditioned for the role of Hannibal Lecter, and I really, really would have liked to have seen what he did. 2015, yeah. Fuller really wanted Tennet, but he thought that Mickelson was more intimidating, which he's right. He would have made it an interesting lecture, but he's right. Mickelson is way more intimidating and way more terrifying, actually. And so they went with Mickelson. But then on June 22nd, 2015, NBC canceled Hannibal after three seasons because nobody watched it. You know why? Here's my guess. It was on NBC. That's what I'm getting to. There was no Peacock. Peacock didn't exist yet. Right, but here's the thing. So you're getting into something accidentally really important here. After it got canceled, Fuller initiated talks with Amazon and Netflix to pick up the show. They did have meetings with Netflix, but since during the run of Hannibal on NBC, there was no NBC streaming service. They had signed an exclusive deal with Amazon, which had lapsed. But Netflix decided to pass on it because they thought they were gonna have to get into like a battle with Amazon and their exclusive holdings of their original streaming thing. They didn't want to get into like a legal battle with it because they were gonna have to like fight Amazon on the excuse Amazon had the exclusive for those seasons. If Netflix had shown new seasons, they couldn't show the other seasons that had come before. So nothing happened. So on July 11th, when asked to elaborate, Fuller commented that Netflix could not renew the series because Amazon had its exclusive streaming rights and that Amazon wanted to renew the series but wanted an immediate debut. But Fuller wanted more time to work on the scripts before shoe day, which is fair. He stated that he and the producers were exploring a possible feature film to get around the streaming problems. So the show, while extremely well regarded and critically acclaimed, but on network TV, I think failed. If it had been on something like, I don't know, FX or HBO or something, it would have worked. It would have been great, it would have gone for a long time and maybe had a movie. But because it was on mainstream network TV before Peacock existed, it failed. But then there's executive producer Martha DeLorentis, yes, of the DeLorentis'. She blamed online piracy for the show's cancellation. Okay. Quote: When nearly one-third of your audience for Hannibal is coming from pirated sites, you don't have to know the calculus to do the math. That's an odd statement. If a show is stolen, it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to fairly compensate a crew and keep a series in production. That's bullshit. If it were online, they would have watched it. We've proven that over and over again. But that's that. We've got one more. Bates Motel, based on the characters from the 1959 novel Psycho by Robert Block. And then, of course, obviously, the famous film that aired on A E, there's your first red flag, from March 18th, 2013 to April 24th, 2020 or 2017. It was developed by Carlton Cughes of Lost and other JJ Abrams Project's fame, Carrie Elrin, and Anthony Cipriano. Now, on July 5th, 1987, a made-for-television film written and directed by a guy named Richard Rothstein, titled Bates Motel, which is a direct sequel to Psycho, appeared on NBC. It started Bud Court, Laurie Petty of Freddie's Nightmares fame, and Moses Gunn was intended to be a pilot for a proposed TV show that for some reason featured supernatural elements. But the series was never picked up by the net. I don't have any evidence that this was a direct tie into the baseball tale show on AE, even though it was NBC. NBC Universal owns AE. I think it's more of a parallel thinking type scenario. But when this was proposed, AE chose to forego a pilot. Fuck it. We love this. And they opted to go straight to series, ordering a 10-episode first season. All in all, Bass Motel would be the longest-running original scripted drama series in the channel's history. The first season received a high praise. On Metacritic, that season holds a score of 66 out of 100. Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an 84 percentage rating, and the second and third seasons have very similar, if not higher. The fourth season on Rotten Tomatoes has a 100% positive rating. It only went for five seasons, then it kind of ran its course. That one was canceled, I think honestly, because it just kind of narrative-wise ran its course, but it was considered one of the greatest shows of the decade. Just like Hannibal, Roger Ebert called Hannibal the greatest drama on television when it was on. This show got incredible ratings, was extremely well regarded. So there are times when it works. Apparently, though, that only happens at a very small window. Because most of these are just are they're just bad.
SPEAKER_01:True.
SPEAKER_00:I think the only glaring example that's why I put them in the order I in which I did was the Exorcist series. Because I watched that when it was on, like when it as it was coming out, I liked it. I thought it was good. And it was a direct sequel to the original Exorcist movie. But you're right, I mean there is more source material, there's more lore other than just the movies. In fact, with Hannibal, it kind of ignores the movies. It just goes straight from the source material. The So when it comes to horror movies adapted into TV, I don't know. If it's not a if it's not based on a bad property or just straight up a money grab you slap the label on, maybe you can do something with it. But most of them don't. I'm waiting for Hellraiser to the series. Then I'll really be interested. Let's see how you do that shit. I'm sure they have. Anyway, well, that's all she wrote. It was, in fact, murder. Murder was the case they gave her. Oh, that I'd watch. Oh yeah, no, that there's a show have waiting to happen. No, that's brilliant. So let's let's take the Harbinger of Death, Jessica Fletcher, and let's put her on in cameos because, like, I remember I've been watching some murders you wrote, and Tom Sellick's Magna PI character shows up in the show. They do a bunch of cross-promotional cameos. So I'm interested in this. Nightmares? Oh. Five bladed fingers.
SPEAKER_01:We've always said it.
SPEAKER_00:By by that he means I'll tell you later. Uh no. Uh what you should you'll get it. I'll send you a newsletter. Please, ladies and gentlemen, make sure you have cleaned up after yourselves to some sort of a reasonable degree. Make sure you have cleaned up the blood, the gore, the viscera. Make sure you have covered your tracks after your bloody rampages. Make sure you have uh tipped your bar staff, your KJs, your DJs, your podcasters. Make sure you support your local comic shops and retailers. And from Dispatch Ajax, we would like to say Godspeed, fair wizards.