Another form of Adaptation Expansion is when a work outlives its source material, and the creators have no intention of continuing it.
In Overtook the Manga, the adaptation and the source material are being produced concurrently, but the adaptation goes faster than the ongoing source material and is forced to find numerous ways to make up for this such as Filler or a Filler Villain Story Arc etc.
This subpage is almost like that trope outside of one important distinction: the source material isn't ongoing.
However, the original work already had an ending (or in some cases ended abruptly without resolving the plot).
In some cases, that original work wasn't a multi-part or even long-running series, but instead a shorter, standalone work. Either way, there are no plans on the part of the original creators to continue the source material any farther, but the writers behind the adaptation have already adapted everything and want to (or are told to by executives) keep going. Padding is no longer an option; it's time to rely on brand-new, original plots from that point onward.
Compare with Continuation which is a type of Fan Fic that picks up from where the original left off; the main difference here is that Adaptation Expansion is related to canon works, whereas continuation fic continues from a specific point.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Oddly enough, Dragon Ball has actually had this happen twice. When the original Dragon Ball manga ended in the mid-1990s, Dragon Ball Z was followed up by Sequel Series Dragon Ball GT. When the series was brought back in the 2010s in the form of the Dragon Ball Super, after the TV series ended the tie in manga Dragon Ball Super continued with its own original storylines.
- The video game Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS ran for four years and concluded after six Seasons before being shut down. The anime based on it, Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, adapts elements of the first two Seasons from the game and has since spun off into original territory following the game's shutdown, with the anime receiving an OVA and a planned movie trilogy.
Films - Live Action
- Jurassic Park was pretty faithful to the novel for a big-budget Hollywood adaptation. The Lost World: Jurassic Park didn't fare nearly as well, but at least had one or two scenes from the book. Jurassic Park III, on the other hand, was made up almost entirely out of whole cloth, other than a scene in a pterodactyl aviary and a river attack scene which swapped out the T. rex for the Spinosaurus. The subsequent Jurassic World films are an original continuation of the story with an almost entirely new cast of characters, both human and dinosaur.
Live Action TV
- Dexter has gone down this route. The first season was a somewhat loose, but still faithful, adaptation of the original novel. The second season after that used some elements from the later books, but mostly went on its own. After that, the series has gone down its own path.
- The Handmaid's Tale: The series goes off on its own original path from Season 3 onwards, and fills in a lot of the details on events which were only mentioned by the book. Among them are what happened prior to the regime taking over, and Ofglen's fate after she's taken away. The series also looks at the pre-Gilead backstories of Offred, Luke, Commander Waterford and even Nick. However, the creator Margaret Atwood is involved in a consultancy role.
- The first two seasons of HBO series, In Treatment, are fairly faithful, sometimes word-for-word, adaptations of the Israeli original. The third season was written entirely from scratch.
Western Animation
- The first two seasons of Hilda contained a mix of adapted stories from the graphic novels and original stories made for the show. However, despite the graphic novel series having ended in 2019 with Hilda and the Mountain King — which the show adapted as a movie in 2021 — the show is planned to get a third and final season following the events of Mountain King consisting entirely of original stories.
