Terminator’s Movie Success Killed The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Although The Sarah Connor Chronicles benefited from being part of the Terminator franchise in terms of publicity, this same connection was what eventually sank the series in the eyes of fans and critics. It is not easy to turn a big-budget, high-octane action movie franchise into a successful TV series. For every sleeper hit like television's Lethal Weapon spinoff, there are numerous failures like Mad Max’s canceled TV show.
Television shows typically operate on lower budgets than Hollywood blockbusters and, unless they are miniseries, feature far longer runtimes than mainstream movies. On occasion, this means that sufficiently ambitious TV shows can tell more complex, layered, and ambitious stories than movies can. However, this can just as often mean that—especially with sci-fi, action, and fantasy television—a show’s limited budget becomes immediately obvious when compared to theatrical releases within the same genre.
Related: Why Terminator: Genisys’s Evil John Connor Didn't Work
An example of this disconnect can be seen in 2008’s doomed Terminator television show, The Sarah Connor Chronicles. An ambitious attempt to transfer the franchise to television after its first three movies, The Sarah Connor Chronicles was intended to be a small-screen continuation of the Terminator series. Recasting Linda Hamilton’s iconic Terminator heroine Sarah Connor was the first major mistake thatThe Sarah Connor Chronicles made but, in retrospect, that wasn’t the only issue that could be traced back to its source material. Ironically, despite the franchise providing the series a high profile and brand recognition, most of the biggest issues with The Sarah Connor Chronicles stemmed from the Terminator franchise itself.
Despite its
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