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Lois Griffin: Stimy Gruffin: The Untold Story? It's not a movie at all, Brian. Just three episodes, back to back. This thing is an insult.
Brian: Well, that might be overstating things a little.
Lois Griffin: It's a middle finger to the fans, is what it is!

A Compilation Movie is created by editing together episodes of a television series to create a feature-length installment. Although this usually applies to home video releases, it can happen with broadcasts as well. How seamless the resulting movie is depends on how good the editor was, and what materials they had to work with (sometimes the opening credits or To Be Continued caption will be left in as the editor only had the complete version of each episode, or the end credits may only refer to the people who worked on the last episode). While the bulk of each episode is usually kept intact, some minor editing is usually made for time, continuity, or to make the new edit more seamless.

Back before home video recorders became widespread these would sometimes be released to cinemas as feature films. As home videos became more common, these were increasingly released as direct-to-video 'movies'. Often the plots of the two episodes thus used had absolutely no relation to each other (save the involvement of The Hero, naturally); this was sometimes patched over with dubbed-in dialog attempting to link the two adventures. With the modern trend of releasing full seasons of series on DVD and streaming services, this form of Compilation Movie seems to be dying out.

A Compilation Movie can also be used in serialized TV to combine all the episodes of a serial into a single "movie", if the serial was very long then the resulting Compilation Movie may be essentially a feature length Clip Show. In the mecha anime genre, these movies are pretty much still par for the course. In the case of Soap Operas that are aired several times a week, a compilation at the end of the week may be the only repeat. This is preferable to a back-to-back showing as it avoids viewers leaving after only the first episode, and in theory allows more advertisements where the credits used to be.

While the pacing of these movies are often quite suspect, especially in a series where there was originally a cliffhanger, new scenes are sometimes added to justify their release.

This is sometimes inverted by editing an extended episode or Direct to Video movie into several episodes for Syndication, leaving several odd cliffhangers if this wasn't intended during production.

Compare Clip Show, Five-Episode Pilot and especially Patchwork Story. See The Film of the Series if the film is more of an adaptation rather than a compilation.


Examples:

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    Anime 
  • Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day has a movie retelling the story a year after the events of the series. About half the footage is just recycled from the episodes.
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba got two of these that showed the last episode or two of the previous arc and the first episode of the upcoming arc that each movie was named after. The Swordsmith Village and Hashira Training arcs got these kinds of movies in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
  • Variation: The American release known as Digimon: The Movie was made by editing together the first three Short Films from Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02. Adventure 02's movie originally wasn't going to be included but higher ups insisted that the 3rd movie be included. In theory, this could have led to a decent remix. In practice, the footage from the first and second movies were passably edited together. The footage from the third part wasn't. As a result of being the weakest edited part, clips were taken out of context and an entire subplot was completely excised. Over 40 minutes of footage from all movies that could have lead to a more cohesive film were left out due to length concerns, though some would argue this was an improvement. This also lead to a specific Digimon fandom pet peeve: An Angela Anaconda short in the first few minutes of the movie to promote both cartoons that FOX had the rights to at the time. Fans not only had to spend time rewinding that in the VHS release of the movie, but also getting past a longer featurette that summarized the events of the first season before they could see the actual movie.
  • Evangelion: Death and Rebirth is kind of a corner case, containing parts of both the show and The Movie.
    • The reason why Death and Rebirth happened was because Hideaki Anno felt that the Japanese public's memory needed to be refreshed regarding the events of the series, considering End of Evangelion was due for release soon and the series had ended a year ago. There were also scenes cut from the series (and re-added for the Director's Cut episodes) that would have been critical to understanding End of Evangelion; for example, the scene where Gendo tries to merge Rei with the Adam embryo on his hand would be nearly incomprehensible without first knowing that Gendo even had the embryo on his hand. A later compilation movie would be made called Revival of Evangelion, which combined an updated version the Death portion of Death and Rebirth called Death(true) with The End of Evangelion into one film, making this a compilation movie of a compilation movie. This version is the one available on most remastered home video releases.
    • Then came Rebuild of Evangelion, a remake of the old series in the form of four movies. The first simply covered the first six episodes, while giving Ramiel a serious badass upgrade, the second started going Off the Rails at about the time Asuka was substituted for Toji as the pilot of Unit 3, and instead of simply destroying and eating Zeruel, Unit 1 sort of merges with it, along with Shinji, and begins to ascend into godhood... or something. Before being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Kaworu, who then proclaims that he will make Shinji happy, this time.
  • Gundam loves doing it. There were compilation movies of the original series, Zeta, 0083, Endless Waltz, 08th MS Team, ∀ Gundam, SEED, and SEED Destiny. 0083, Endless Waltz and 08th MS Team are odd cases, since they were originally OVAs rather than full TV series like the others.
  • Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. — The Laughing Man and Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd Gig — Individual Eleven were compilation movies of the two seasons of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
  • RahXephon: The Movie edited together whole episodes with new scenes and had a different ending.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has two Compilation Movies, each around two hours. The first, Gurren-hen or Childhood's End, covers the first half of the series, streamlining the plot and restructuring it after episode eight. The second, Lagann-hen or The Lights in the Sky Are Stars, is a semi-aversion, containing more new film animation than it does recycled TV animation. It spans the invasion of Teppelin and battle with Lordgenome to the end of the series, bringing the scale of the final battle to even greater heights. The initial international release was subtitles only, but in January 2024 the dubs of the films were released in theaters.
  • When Funimation first aired Dragon Ball Z in the U.S., the five-episode Raditz arc that started the series was edited into a single movie released on home video titled Dragon Ball Z: Arrival
    • An inversion: the DBZ short anime movie Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might was initially shown in the U.S. as a three-part episode back when the series was syndicated.
  • Averted by the "Episode Of" One Piece Movies/Specials, which have re-covered the Alabasta, Drum Island, Arlong and CP9 story arcs, as they re-adapt the manga from scratch and use entirely new animation.
  • Some of Funimation's Dragon Ball and One Piece DVDs include a 'marathon feature' extra that plays the whole disc with a single opening and no credits or next episode previews.
  • Attack on Titan has two compilation films entitled "Crimson Bow and Arrow" and "Wings of Freedom" respectfully.
  • Inuyasha had a couple of one-hour TV specials that were carved up into two regular episodes for the DVDs (losing some footage in the process). Since the dub used the DVD version of the series, this was blamed on it at first.
  • Four episodes of the Japanese show Dinosaur War Izenborg were badly dubbed into English and released on VHS as Attack of the Super Monsters.
  • The three Kiddy Grade movies serve this purpose for the events of the first (and so far only, not counting the spinoff) season.
  • One of the Stratos 4 movies does this for the first season and the movies before it.
  • Space Carrier Blue Noah was dubbed as Thundersub and the first four episodes were compiled to be released on VHS tape together after being shown altogether as one large movie pilot on American TV.
  • Death Note got two compilations, the first supposedly a look at the first half of the anime from Ryuk's perspective with a bit of extra footage implying Light became a Shinigami after he died and the second a straight-up compilation of the second half of the anime.
  • Most Macross films are Alternate Continuity Non-Serial Movies, but there are a few exceptions:
    • The movie edition of Macross Plus adds twenty minutes of new animation and shuffles the order of some events around, but otherwise faithfully follows the plot of the original OVA.
    • The Macross Frontier/Macross 7 crossover Macross FB7: Listen to My Song! is basically a 7 recap with commentary by Frontier's cast.
  • Inazuma Eleven had its first movie consist of mostly recycled footage of the first season, before finally swerving off to an Alternate Continuity. Some fans liked it, but others weren't impressed.
  • Uchuu Senkan Yamato is a strange tale. It originally started life as a 26 episode series that tanked. In an effort to make back some cash, producer Nishizaki edited the season into a 2.5 hour long movie using animation from the series, some test footage and some new stuff — and it took off like a rocket.
    • And then Space Battleship Yamato 2199 and Yamato 2202 inverted that, premiering as a series of seven theatrical movies that are later edited into a 26-episode OVA and eventually making it to broadcast television.
  • Eden of the East had "Air Communication," a condensed-by-editing version of the series with additional narration from the characters, packaged with the first of the show's two sequel movies.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Two compilation movies were released in October 2012, with an actual sequel released a year later. Comparisons have been made to Neon Genesis Evangelion (see above).
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie is actually two OVAs combined together. However, unlike most instances of this trope, the OVAs were directly sequential and blended seamlessly
  • Eureka Seven features a bizarre subversion. The movie recreates several scenes from the anime, but they're in a completely different context. Even the Mind Screw of a story contains the theme of creating your own myth, instead of following someone else's.
  • William Winckler, the mind behind the cheesy dub for Tekkaman, took several old Toei titles that were never released in the US (Fist of the North Star, Gaiking, Danguard Ace, and Kitaro's Graveyard Gang, to name a few) and compiled them into varying amounts of English-dubbed compilation movies aired on the Toei Animation Broadband Channel in Japan and aimed at Japanese audiences. So far, the only compilation movies to receive a release in the US are the ones for Gaiking (we can thank Shout! Factory for that, though it isn't currently known if they plan on releasing the other William Winckler compilation movies), and if they're any indication, these new William Winckler compilation movies are just as cheesy as his Tekkaman dub (then again, as just mentioned, the dubs were produced with Japanese audiences in mind and not American ones).
  • The first Tiger & Bunny film (The Beginning) is a compilation of the first 2 episodes of the anime series with some extra scenes and a new villain added in. The second film (The Rising) is a sequel to the series taking place after a Time Skip.
  • Robotech has two compilation movies associated with it.
    • It first got this treatment as Codename: Robotech, although it was essentially an extended version of the Clip Show episode "Gloval's Report", charting the story of all the Macross Saga episodes up to that point. It was originally intended as a feature-length pilot to preview the series for US TV, though in the UK it was released on home video and was actually the only way to see Robotech in the country until the Sci-Fi Channel showed the entire series in 1993.
    • Over twenty years later, Harmony Gold edited the Genesis Climber MOSPEADA concert video/Clip Show OAV Love Live Alive into a compilation movie retelling the New Generation story.
  • Space Battleship Yamato was edited down to a 130-minute movie for theatrical release in 1977, which some sources credit with its actually becoming popular. An English-language version, chopped down to 101 minutes and titled "Space Cruiser Yamato" was released in the US before the Star Blazers adaptation of the series, and that was later cut down (badly) again for home video release in the UK, to 85 minutes, simply appearing as "Space Cruiser"note  on the box.
  • Italy had many compilations of Go Nagai mecha series, even combining the actual shorts into two full movies known as Mazinger Z vs the Ufo Robots and Ufo Robots vs The Space Invaders. There was also a giant cut-and-paste mess of all six shorts into Mazinger vs Ufo Robo Grendizer, which ends with a cut to black and the narrator saying "Great Mazinger killed Grendizer. The End".
  • The Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters series was edited together as two movies for its first home video release.
  • The first US airing of Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl, was done as a TV movie which combined the first three episodes of the saga.
  • The original Time Bokan got a couple of these for the English-language market entitled Time Fighters and Time Fighters in the Land of Fantasy.
  • Maple Town averted this with its respective movie being an original story. Its sequel though Palm Town plays this trope straight with its movie; said movie was just the first episode of the series with footage from the final episodes of Maple Town spliced into it.
  • The first season of Overlord got two called Overlord: The Undead King and Overlord: The Dark Warrior.
  • Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation was originally released as a two-episodes OVA series on VHS in Japan before it was edited into a single movie for its DVD release. The DVD cut of the OVA was the version that Manga Entertainment dubbed in English.
  • The Armitage III OVA series was edited into a theatrical movie titled Poly-Matrix, which also included a few new scenes. Most notably this feature-length version of the anime was made for the foreign market in mind and featured a different English voice cast from the one used to dub the four OVA episodes starring Elizabeth Berkeley as Naomi Armitage and Kiefer Sutherland as Ross Sylibus.
  • Five episodes of the Humongous Mecha anime UFO Warrior Dai Apolon were combined and released in the west as Shadow World.
  • Star Driver had one in the form of Star Driver: The Movie, which was a compilation of the whole series with about three minutes of new footage. Unfortunately this ended up working against the franchise, since promotion had hyped up the film as a new chapter in the story and shown promotional art of the characters in new outfits. Fans were highly disappointed that the movie hardly had anything new to offer, and it's widely considered to have killed the franchise.
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba had a theatrically-released compilation movie of the last two episodes of the Entertainment District Arc and the first of the Swordsmith Village Arc, titled To The Swordsmith Village.
  • Space Patrol Luluco has this in the form of First Love Big Bang, which was initially released (with commentary!) on the special edition Blu-Ray. It is a compilation of the whole series with some scenes removed for time/pacing reasons. It eventually received a special one-night screening at the Uplink Kichijoji in September 2019.
  • Kirby: Right Back at Ya! had Fright to The Finish, where 4Kids took their dubs of the show's final five episodes, and edited them together into a movie. Since those episodes already formed the show's Grand Finale story arc, the edit worked seamlessly.

    Eastern European Animation 
  • The Hungarian cartoon Vízipók-Csodapók has a movie that is edited together from the first two seasons and was released theatrically. The episodes edited into the film are disjointed, yet it is structured in such a way that the whole thing seems to follow a summer in the life of the waterspider.
  • The last few episodes of the Polish cartoon Zaczarowany ołówek ("The Enchanted Pencil") became this. Unlike the early episodes these were connected and later made into a movie called “Voyage with the Enchanted Pencil”. The edited episodes are the same but now the characters have voices.

    Fan Film 

    Film — Animated 

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Many movie serials of the 30s, 40s and 50s were later edited together into features so they could be released through cinemas again.
  • The 1936 Flash Gordon serial was later condensed into a feature-length film called Rocket Ship.
  • The Hexer was compiled from a then-unreleased TV series, and naturally ran into problems being a Compressed Adaptation of 13 hour-long episodes squeezed into two hours. The series was released a year later, to somewhat better reviews.
  • Invisible Avenger is compiled from episodes that were shot for a The Shadow television series that never reached the air.
  • The Little Rascals: The 1981 television special Rascal Dazzle, broadcast in syndication, collected clips from the various shorts with narration by Jerry Lewis.
  • Shogun Assassin was a compilation and rewrite/redub of a few Lone Wolf and Cub movies.
  • Stop! Look! And Laugh! is a 1960 movie with footage from The Three Stooges mixed in with bridging segments by Paul Winchell and his two dummies, Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff.

    Live-Action TV 

Networks:

Series:

  • The Adventures of Robin Hood had three 'movies' released on video, and later DVD, called "Robin Hood: The Movie", "Robin Hood: The Quest for the Crown" and "Robin Hood: Greatest Adventures" that were only way to get any of this classic show before the entire series was released on DVD.
  • The season 2 and 3 finales of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ("S.O.S." Part One/Two and "Absolution"/"Ascension" respectively) were each two episodes combined, clearly intended to air together from the outset.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man (1978) had two movies made by editing together two-part episodes into a single film: Spider-Man Strikes Back (edited from the two-part episode "The Deadly Dust") and Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge (edited from the two-part episode "The Chinese Web").
  • "King Arthur, the Young Warlord" did a good job of editing together episodes of Arthur of the Britons into a single cohesive story.
  • Babylon 5 has an interesting case with "In The Beginning", which was basically recapping the established history of the Earth Minbari War, complete with whatever flashback footage they'd used to depict The War on the show (which took place 10-15 years after the end of the conflict). Quite a bit of the movie was original footage specific to the plot, filling in the blanks in what we had been shown about the war, but there are still quite a few recognizable scenes spliced in from the show, leading to things like Michael York appearing in the movie for all of one second, with no lines.
  • The 1970s Battlestar Galactica episodes "Living Legend" (parts 1 and 2) and "Fire in Space" were edited together to produce "Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack".
  • The Jesus portions of 2013 miniseries The Bible, as well as deleted scenes, were released as the 2014 film Son of God.
  • The two-part pilot episode of Blade: The Series was edited into a movie titled Blade: House of Chthon.
  • Blue Light had its first four episodes condensed down into I Deal In Danger and released theatrically overseas.
  • City Of Angels (the Stephen J. Cannell one) had its three-part opener "The November Plan" edited down into a feature and released overseas under that title.
  • One of the constituent serials of the NBC series Cliffhangers, "Stop Susan Williams", was later re-edited into a telemovie, The Girl Who Saved The World. Because the original serial's broadcast was Cut Short by cancellation, it ended up being the first time Americans saw that serial's ending. Details.
  • Colonel March Investigates is a 1953 British film consisting of the three pilot episodes of the Colonel March of Scotland Yard TV series.
  • Four episodes of the short-lived Robert Conrad series The D.A. were strung together to create the movie Confessions of the D.A. Man
    • Universal did this with a number of short-lived series. In fact, they had a producer on the payroll, Harry Tatelman, whose job was to take short-lived series and create movies out of them. Tatelman is listed on each 'movie' as a producer, even though he had nothing to do with the production of any of the actual series.
  • A number of episodes of Dan August were spliced together to make movies, in an attempt to cash in on the box-office success of Burt Reynolds. Each of the seven movies features episodes that have a similar theme, i.e., Once Is Never Enough features episodes with multiple murders, The Trouble With Women features episodes with female killers, etc.
  • One of the oldest examples must be the 1955 movie Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, edited together from three episodes of Disneyland: "Davy Crockett: Indian Fighter", "Davy Crockett Goes to Congress" and "Davy Crockett at the Alamo".
    • Davy Crockett and the River Pirates did the same thing with the remaining two episodes, "Davy Crockett's Keelboat Race" and "Davy Crockett and the River Pirates".
  • Dead Set was originally aired as a 5-part mini series but has later been shown as a 2.5 hour movie.
  • The Devil's Messenger is a 1961 anthology horror film combining 3 episodes of the 1959 B&W Swedish television series 13 Demon Street with some new scenes featuring Lon Chaney Jr. and Karen Kadler.
  • Doctor Who:
    • During the 70s, the BBC would air a Compilation Movie of a previous serial at Christmas, These would then be used as replacement programs if bad weather had canceled a live sports game.
    • "Resurrection of the Daleks": was made as four episodes, but was then edited into two double episodes for its original broadcast due to a scheduling snarl-up with the 1984 Olympic Games. The repeats and video releases used the intended four-part version.
    • UK TV Gold and some American PBS stations used to show classic serials in Compilation Movie format. The color used to re-colorize "The Dæmons" came off such a compilation. BBC America has also done this with new series episodes, albeit quite badly by leaving the director and producer credits in, halfway through the movie. Also, when BBC Four repeats classic serials, they will almost always be edited into double- or triple-length episodes.
    • "The Five Doctors" inverted the trope: it was made as a 90-minute movie, but was cut into four episodes for syndication. This also happened to season 22, which was made as double episodes but later split into regular length episodes. In both cases this produced some very odd cliffhangers. The DVDs use the original versions.
    • Also done to a few classic serials for their DVD release, unlike many other examples these Compilation Movies are special editions that add new special effects, put deleted scenes back in, or improve the pacing. With the exception of the original DVD of "The Five Doctors" (which was later re-released with both versions), these are always bundled with the original episodic versions.
    • During the run up to the 50th anniversary in 2013, BBC America aired monthly specials called The Doctors Revisited. Each would be a documentary-style retrospective of a single Doctor followed by a chosen adventure of that Doctor. For the first seven, the episodes of each serial were combined into a single movie.
  • "The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West" was a compilation of episodes from the failed comedy Dusty's Trail.
  • A two-part episode of The F.B.I., "The Executioners", was released overseas theatrically as Cosa Nostra, Arch Enemy of the FBI, on the strength of the main guest cast: Telly Savalas, Susan Strasberg, Robert Duvall, Robert Drivas, Celeste Holm and Walter Pidgeon.
  • Two episodes of the live-action The Flash (1990) TV series, guest-starring Mark Hamill as The Trickster, were released as a "movie" on VHS. In the original run they were episodes 13 & 22.
  • Inverted with Get Smart. After the success of Batman: The Movie, a script was written for a proposed feature called A Man Called Smart. After the failure of Munster Go Home, the project was scrapped and the script was split into a three-part episode.
  • The 1966 TV adaptation of The Green Hornet had two of these. In 1974 four episodes of the series—"The Hunter and the Hunted", "Invasion from Outer Space" (Parts 1 and 2), and "The Preying Mantis"—were stitched together for overseas theatrical release. DVDs of this movie are noteworthy for its spotlight stealing billing: "Bruce Lee as Kato in The Green Hornet". Followed by a 1976 release, Fury of the Dragon, which compiled the episodes "Trouble for Prince Charming", "Secret of the Sally Bell", "The Ray Is for Killing", and "Bad Bet on a 459-Silent".
  • Also happened to H₂O: Just Add Water when it was shown on Nickelodeon. This time, they mixed the first few episodes with two episodes from later in the first season, meaning that one character came out of nowhere, did very little and just walked off. Technically not a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, as the same character later reappeared and came dangerously close to discovering Cleo, Emma and Rikki's big secret.
  • The Hawaii Five-O three-parter "V For Vashon" was occasionally shown in syndication as a condensed movie.
  • The iCarly "movies" iGo To Japan and iParty With Victorious are setup like this, with each being aired as a full 1 and a half hour movie, but split into three parts when aired as part of a regular schedule.
    • At least they're long enough to qualify as feature-length episodes, unlike "iStart A Fan War", "iPsycho", "iQuit iCarly", iAnd so on...
  • I Love Lucy had a movie compiled from three episodes of the first season, but fear of competition with another Lucy/Desi movie, The Long, Long Trailer, prevented a public release until it came to DVD in 2007.
  • Several episodes of Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot (the American version of the Giant Robo Toku series) were edited together into the movie "Voyage Into Space".
  • The original (1970s) Kolchak: The Night Stalker had two pairs of episodes grafted together to form movies. "Firefall" and "The Energy Eater" became "Crackle of Death", and "Demon in Lace" and "Legacy of Terror" were joined to create "The Demon and the Mummy".
  • Law & Order: Corruption Empire, a DVD release consisting of the Season 7 episode "Corruption" and the Season 9 episode "Empire", stitched together. In reverse order, with only one set of opening and closing credits (causing Carey Lowell as Jamie Ross and several others to go uncredited).
  • A Direct to Video Cruel Intentions prequel, Manchester Prep, was actually a compilation of episodes produced for a never-aired TV series based on the movie. (FOX was the would-be broadcaster, of course.)
  • The Man from U.N.C.L.E. perfected this format, releasing all of its two-part episodes (with some new footage) as theatrical features (usually overseas first, because the show was not being aired in foreign markets yet — or if it was, not usually in colour). The films released were:
    • To Trap a Spy (1964) (reedited version of "Solo", the original series pilot)
    • The Spy with My Face (1965) (reedited version (with additional footage) of the first season episode "The Double Affair")
    • One Spy Too Many (1966) (reedited version (with additional footage) of the second season two-part episode "Alexander The Greater Affair"). This was the last of the U.N.C.L.E. movies to be released theatrically in North America.
    • One of Our Spies is Missing (1966) (reedited version (with additional footage) of the second season two-part episode "The Bridge of Lions Affair")
    • The Spy in the Green Hat (1966) (reedited version of the third season two-part episode "The Concrete Overcoat Affair")
    • The Karate Killers (1967) (reedited version of the third season two-part episode "The Five Daughters Affair")
    • The Helicopter Spies (1968) (reedited version of the fourth season two-part episode "The Prince of Darkness Affair")
    • How to Steal the World (1968) (reedited version of the fourth season two-part series finale, "The Seven Wonders of the World Affair")
  • "Mission Impossible Versus the Mob" was created from a two-part episode of Mission: Impossible ("The Council", for the record).
  • The opening story of Miss Marple (1984)'s second season, "Murder at the Vicarage", was originally filmed as two hour-long episodes, but was then edited into a single Made-for-TV Movie before release, so that The BBC could use it as a Christmas special to launch the season. Other story arcs from the first two seasons later got the same treatment for some exports and repeats.
  • The Monty Python movie And Now For Something Completely Different. This was in fact a compilation of completely re-filmed sketches made for theatrical release, since the originals a) were shot on video tape, b) had laugh tracks, and c) were only available for TV distribution (the movie could also be viewed in full colour, at a time when many British viewers owned only black-and-white television sets).
  • In the UK, two Mr. Bean compilation DVDs have been released, 'Happy Birthday Mr Bean' and 'Mr Bean's Holiday Havoc' (not to be confused with the similarly titled movie), lasting 60-70 minutes.
    • There was also a 'Best Of Mr Bean' Special with a newly recorded Framing Device of Mr Bean looking through his loft.
  • The season two and three DVDs of My Name Is Earl combine the two-part episodes, even counting them as a single episode on the episode count.
    • Also, the unrelated first two episodes of season four original aired as an hour-long episode, and are presented as such on the DVD.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000 has featured several of these clunkers:
    • "Cosmic Princess" was made from two episodes of Space: 1999.
    • "Master Ninja" and "Master Ninja II" were each pieced together from two episodes of the obscure martial arts show The Master. Because the show's premise is "two guys traveling the country in a van fighting injustice," the two halves of each film take place in different cities with different villains and different guest stars, and pretty much no transition in between.
    • "Riding with Death" came from two episodes of Gemini Man that featured country singer Jim Stafford as a guest star — never mind the fact that they were a good distance apart in the show's run, and the guest star had left the series by the time of the latter, requiring a clumsy cover-up.
    • "Manhunt in Space" and "Crash Of The Moons"came from episodes of an old 50s sci-fi show, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. The editing was so inartful that Joel and the 'Bots lampshaded it by treating the first-episode fade-out as the end of the movie... only to react with shock and disgust that they were actually only halfway through the feature.
    • "He triiiiiiied to kill me with a forklift! OLE!", "Fugitive Alien", from the Star Wolf series.
    • "Time of the Apes", from Army of the Apes.
    • The legendary Prince of Space was made from two films in the same series: Planet Prince and The Terrifying Spaceship. This is why the plot seems so disjointed, and why the second "half" makes no mention of the rocket fuel formula stolen in the first.
  • While not a stitching together of TV episodes, some of the scenes in the first two On the Buses movies (On the Buses and Mutiny on the Buses) were lifted from TV episodes.
  • For some reason, this is still being done where it shouldn't be. Parallax had one done that was a compilation of the first five episodes, which were largely stand-alone stories (although each did have some connection to the others).
  • Episodes of the Planet of the Apes TV series were reedited as 2-hour TV movies with introductions by Roddy McDowall as Galen.
  • The final Quatermass serial, called simply Quatermass on TV, was specifically written to be also released as a cinema film, The Quatermass Conclusion, which was not a success. The Wacky Wayside Tribe section with the old people living in the scrapyard was specifically written to be unnecessary to the plot, so that it could be removed from the film to save time.
  • The Rat Patrol's three-part story "The Last Harbor Raid" was edited together to form Massacre Harbor for overseas release.
  • Salvage 1: The two-part episodes "Golden Orbit" and "Hard Water" were combined in the late eighties and aired as "movies" on CBS Late Night.
  • Space: 1999: In addition to the entry mentioned in Mystery Science Theater 3000 above, the series spawned four other compilations — Alien Attack (from "Breakaway" and "War Games" plus shots from four other episodes and newly-filmed links), Journey Through The Black Sun (from "Collision Course" and "Black Sun" with dialogue from "New Adam New Eve"), Destination Moonbase Alpha (from the series' only two-parter, "The Bringers Of Wonder") and the Italy-only release Spazio:1999 (compiled from "Breakaway," "Ring Around The Moon" and "Another Time, Another Place").
  • Television Serial show Seven Color Mask, the first ever tokusatsu superhero TV series by Toei Company, had its first four Story Arcs compiled into theatrical releases, becoming Film Serials. The first arc was divided into four films, while the next three were divided into three each.
  • The BBC's Tales From Europe strand of Fairy Tale adaptations was an inversion of this trope — it took existing movies (usually made abroad and often from behind the Iron Curtain, with either dubbing or added voiceover narration in English) and serialized them as several episodes. The originally East German The Singing Ringing Tree is probably the most famous example.
  • The extremely short-lived Tomie: Fearsome Beauty V-Cinema series was compiled into the slightly better-known Tomie: Another Face direct-to-video movie.
  • Some of the UK Top Gear DVDs are compilations of the challenges that last up to three hours, and from 'The Challenges Three' onwards have even included bonus discs; there have been five of these compilations so far.
  • Gerry Anderson's UFO (1970) also got this treatment with Invasion: UFO, which condensed three episodes (with shots from three others) into a 95-minute feature. Which would be fine, except that UFO, like Space: 1999, was made for an hour-long slot!
  • The Virginian:
  • Yor: The Hunter from the Future was compiled from 4 episodes of an Italian TV miniseries.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation series Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons were subjected to this.
  • The Gerry Anderson-inspired series Star Fleet was also subjected to this when released on VHS in the UK. Two compilation films named The Thalian Space Wars and Space Quest for F-01 were released. Both of these films are edited from several episodes, making them both largely incoherent with several cuts.
    • To a lesser extent in the US. 8 tapes were released of the series, each one spanning the entire series, with 3 episodes edited together (with less drastic cuts as the UK tapes) to make a mini-movie.

    Video Games 
  • Kingdom Hearts: The HD 1.5 ReMIX version of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days is just the cutscenes of the original game edited together into a two-hour movie with text boxes explaining the plot details between scenes. HD 2.5 ReMIX does the same thing with Kingdom Hearts Re:coded. There are fans that are pleased by the decision to keep 358/2 Days as a compilation movie due to the gameplay of the original often being criticized as being extremely repetitive. Others found that using the text boxes to explain the plot details between scenes meant the removal of character interactions and boss fights that some thought had more emotional impact when kept in.
  • The limited edition of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence included a third disc that edits all the cutscenes in the form of a movie with narration that linked the gameplay segments. Curiously, the third disc was a PS2-format disc, despite consisting mainly of pre-recorded video files.
  • Metroid: Other M has a "theater mode" unlocked after completing the main game, which consists of all the cutscenes compiled as a two-hour movie, with game footage interspersed between to help with the pacing. The end product is visually inconsistent however, as the "movie" regularly jumps between in-engine cutscenes, lavishly-detailed CGI cutscenes, and unaltered gameplay footage with a fixed camera angle.
  • Shenmue: The Movie is a 90-minute feature length movie comprised entirely of cutscenes and gameplay footage from the first game. It had a limited theatrical release in Japan before being released on VHS and DVD. It was released in the west as a bonus disc included with the Xbox port of Shenmue II.
  • People on Youtube often upload every cutscene in a game edited to play back to back in one video. Bonus points if it's titled "_____: The Movie".

    Web Original 
  • The first season of BIGTOP BURGER was compiled into one 11-minute video, with some additional art in the credits.
  • Meta Runner: New Game+ is an edit of the 10 episodes of season 1 into a full-length feature.
  • Red vs. Blue does this with each season they make, at the expense of cutting out most of the jokes that occur at the end of the episodes, since these occur as the episode fades to black. Those jokes that are simply too hilarious to be cut have extra footage shot for them.
    • The newer seasons of Red vs. Blue are written as movies to begin with, then cut up into episodic scripts before filming. Rooster Teeth continues to use the episodic format because of the advantages of instantaneous feedback.
  • SMPLive: Several creators have made a "best of SMPLive" compilation video.
  • TOME received compilation movies in 2023, with additional scenes that depict the events of the series from Zetto and Kizuna's perspective.
  • When Evil Calls was the first horror series designed to be downloaded to mobile phones. Originally consisting of 20 episodes of 4-5 minutes each, it was reedited and additional footage added to turn it into a feature film.

    Western Animation 

In General:

Creators:

  • Several direct-to-video Disney movies released between 1998 and 2003 are based on TV shows and aren't sequels but really random episode compilations with linking material. note 
  • The Disney television film Coyote Tales consisted of several Disney shorts edited together with a Framing Device added that consisted of a coyote pup being told stories by his father and grandfather.

Series:

  • The creators of 12 oz. Mouse took an unconventional approach to its first home media release, editing together the ENTIRE series (up to that point) into a single feature film, with the opening title sequence played only once, a new credit scroll for all the episodes at the end, and some new linking footage interspersed throughout. This was meant to make the show's overarching story easier to follow, since its narrative was deceptively intricate.
  • Dennis the Menace: Memory Mayhem is a compilation of episodes from the 80s animated series linked together by a story about Mr. Wilson getting Easy Amnesia.
  • The series Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds was condensed (with a new redub and script) into a 90-minute TV movie.
  • This happened to Donkey Kong Country. A few episodes were strung together to create a movie called The Legend of the Crystal Coconut. It would have worked fine, had they not had two of the episodes out of order (one of them actually having a flashback to something that was to happen in the next segment!)
  • Family Guy Presents: Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story is an inversion. It was conceived as a direct-to-video movie shortly before FOX decided to renew the series a few years after its earlier cancellation. The movie was written in a way that it could split into three episodes, all connected to a main story arc, and shown on television.
  • Futurama:
    • The direct-to-video movies (Bender's Big Score, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender's Game, and Into the Wild Green Yonder) are technically each about four TV episodes cut together. However, they were released as movies before being broadcast as individual episodes, making this something of an inversion.
    • The DVD of The Beast with a Billion Backs also included "The Lost Episode", a 30 minute compilation of the cutscenes from Futurama: The Game with a few seconds of gameplay footage to bridge the gaps between levels (and a few of the direct video game references edited out). The DVD commentary lampshades that the cutscenes were the main reason to play the game for many people.
  • G.I. Joe:
    • The first two G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero miniseries ("The M.A.S.S. Device" and "Revenge of Cobra") were released on home video as feature-length movies on VHS and Betamax by Family Home Entertainment. In contrast, G.I. Joe: The Movie was split into five episodes with live-action introductions hosted by Sergeant Slaughter that were syndicated as part of the series.
    • G.I. Joe: Resolute was initially uploaded to the Internet as a miniseries consisting of ten five-minute episodes and a ten-minute finale, but was edited into an hour-long movie when it aired on [adult swim] and was released on DVD.
  • Heathcliff: The Movie compiled from seven episodes, being told by Heathcliff through flashbacks to his three nephews (and a mouse) against their will because they were bored. The first two episodes were told uninterrupted.
  • Few episodes of Highlander: The Animated Series were compiled together into video film Highlander: The Adventure Begins.
  • House of Mouse had two direct-to-video movies that were mainly made of recycled material from the show. The first was Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse, which recycled Christmas-related material, and the second was Mickey's House of Villains, which reused footage from the show's Halloween Episodes as well as Halloween Disney shorts.
  • Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling: At least a few episodes were cobbled together into these and run in syndication in the late 1980s, adding in new dubbed dialogue from Brad Garrett to link the episodes together.
  • An unusual case happened for the Series Finale of Justice League. For the US release, Starcrossed had its three-part episodes edited together into one single long 60-minute (or so) movie for its first DVD release, complete with an entirely new opening credits sequence and was advertised as "Starcrossed: The Movie". When it was released in the UK, the cover of the DVD indicated that this is exactly what had been released there as well; but nope, it had all three episodes UNEDITED, playing in a continuous manner.
  • Kim Possible's "A Sitch In Time" three-part arc was billed as a movie when Disney aired it. It even got its own DVD.
  • The various Looney Tunes movies (and TV specials) were created by editing together vintage shorts with new linking material. Listen carefully to those movies that were put together in the 1970s and '80s and you'll be able to easily tell which is new and which is original from earlier years. The aged-sounding voice of Mel Blanc in the new material stands out from his younger-sounding self in the clips from the 1940s, '50s and '60s. There are also differences in the animation and character designs, sometimes subtle and sometimes approaching Art Shift levels of obviousness.
  • The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh combines Disney's first three theatrical Winnie the Pooh shorts with new linking material.
  • The Filmation series The New Adventures of Mighty Mousenote  had 16 episodes edited together into the movie Mighty Mouse: The Great Space Chase.
  • The three-episode pilot of NASCAR Racers was released on VHS as its own movie, entitled Start Your Engines.
  • The Moomins has four compilations made from the 1977 "fuzzy felt" Stop Motion series, which put episodes of the show together to form a full-length adaptation of stories from the books. Released more than 30 years after the show originally aired, they feature remastered footage and a redone soundtrack. They are Moomins and Midsummer Madness, Moomins and the Comet Chase, Moomins and the Winter Wonderland, and The Exploits of Moominpappa: Adventures of a Young Moomin.
  • PAW Patrol had two in the UK: Big Screen Tails and Mission: Big Screen.
  • A variation, the ReBoot movies Daemon Rising and My Two Bobs were later split into separate episodes to be aired as episodes for the final season.
  • The third and final Recess movie, Recess: All Growed Down, was just strung together from previous episodes, one unaired episode, and linking material.
    • Another variation: Recess: Taking the Fifth Grade was compiled of three unaired episodes.
  • The entirety of the first Redwall cartoon series got compiled into a single movie.
  • Samurai Jack had several. The first 3 episodes were originally aired as a movie, and there are at least two multi-part stories (Birth of Evil and The Scotsman Saves Jack) that got the same treatment.
  • The South Park: Imaginationland movie is all three episodes of the "Imaginationland" arc of the TV show edited together in one movie, and — in a surprisingly notable first for the franchise on DVD — is completely uncensored, to boot.
    • Similarly, a marathon of South Park's most notorious episodes concluded with the Season 1 cliffhanger and its resolution episode edited together as one, interspaced with "Great Destinations" segments from the creators in Snoqualmie, Washington.
    • While not yet edited into a compilation movie, the three meteor shower episodes from Season 3 were edited into one in script form by a fan.
    • Comedy Central occasionally runs the "Imaginationland" and "Black Friday" arcs as movies.
  • SpacePOP's DVDs and some web episodes are several shorter segments combined to make a longer episode.
  • This was the original plan for each arc of The Spectacular Spider-Man; the resulting movies would include footage cut from the episodes for time and standards and practices reasons. However, this plan was scrapped after the release of the first such collection, "Attack of the Lizard".
  • The Spider-Man (1981) cartoon released most of the Doctor Doom Story Arc (four episodes, skipping one in the middle that didn't have much to do with him anyway) under the title Doctor Doom Conquers the World.
  • The Spider-Man: The Animated Series compilation Secret Wars just barely qualifies as a stand-alone story, as it consists of the last five episodes (the three-part "Secret Wars" adaptation, followed by the two-part "Spider Wars") of a serialized TV series. However, it is particularly notable for cramming five half-hour episodes onto a single VHS tape.
  • The first four full episodes of Star vs. the Forces of Evil Season 3 are combined together to make the 2-hour season premiere movie, "The Battle for Mewni".
  • The first Star Wars: Clone Wars miniseries aired on Cartoon Network with 4 minute episodes, then later compiled on two DVD's as a pair of hour-long movies. Inverted in some countries outside the US, where even the TV airings used the movie format rather than the individual episodes.
  • Inverted by Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The pilot movie, consisting of the first three-episode story arc and a prequel episode, was released in theaters before the subsequent series itself debuted on Cartoon Network. However, all of the problems of the original form shine through. There are very obvious breaks between what would have been the stories of the separate episodes.
  • Steven Universe: The first four episodes of the fifth season ("Stuck Together"/"The Trial"/"Off Colors"/"Lars' Head") aired as the hour-long special Wanted. The episode title cards were left unaltered, however.
  • The five-part pilot for the '80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was edited into a movie titled "The Epic Begins", which was released on VHS by Family Home Entertainment and on Laserdisc by Image Entertainment.
    • Double Market-Based Title: Not only was the series renamed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in the UK, the pilot video was renamed too: How It All Began.
  • Transformers: Inverted when The Transformers: The Movie was broken up into 5 episodes (designated "Days") for Season 5 of The Transformers (which was mainly just episodes from previous seasons edited to include a live-action framing device of an Optimus Prime puppet telling stories to a human child).
  • All of the Trollz DVDs are three episodes combined into one movie, with bonus scenes added in.
  • Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving is compiled of the special "A Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving" and a few of the New Adventures episodes, with minimal original animation.
  • The first two episodes of Young Justice were advertised as a single event (Independence Day).


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