Adaptation Displacement / Live-Action TV

Examples of Adaptation Displacement after an existing work has been adapted into a live action series.

A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples shouldn't be added until six months after the adaptation is released, to avoid any knee-jerk reactions.

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• Band of Brothers: This critically-acclaimed miniseries about Easy Company's exploits is based on the nonfiction book of the same name, which has since been overshadowed by the TV series to the point that many (but not all) subsequent editions released after 2001 use a photo of the miniseries as its cover.
• Kingdom (2019): Most people (both in South Korea and overseas) don't know that the show is based on the webcomic Kingdom of the Gods.
• The Untamed is just one of many adaptations of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi. The novel is hugely popular in China but the series is more famous internationally.
• A lot of people know the Canadian high school drama franchise Degrassi. A lesser amount of people realise that the show they think of when hearing the name is a revival of a pair of series from the 80s, nor that even those series were preceded by an even earlier children's show. And a much smaller amount of people have no idea that the entire franchise was born out of a short film adaptation of a 1974 children's book.
• Not only was Little House on the Prairie based on a book, Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy preceded its publication. (And not only that, but the series was based more on the book that came after it, On the Banks of Plum Creek).
• While some people do know that I Love Lucy was inspired by Lucille Ball's radio show My Favorite Husband, it can be assumed that few but the most diehard fans have actually listened to that program, and thus don't know just how heavily the television series was drawn from it. Many I Love Lucy episodes have a corresponding My Favorite Husband episode they were based on, and if you do listen to the latter, you will be surprised at how similar the plots are, down to some lines and jokes having been copied word for word.
• The science show Beakman's World has proven so popular, very few people know that it was adapted from a Sunday comic strip titled You Can With Beakman & Jax, which ran up until the creator's passing in 2016, long after the show was over.
• In this day and age, far more people are aware of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie, or the 2007 TV series, or even the 1930s serials than are aware that it was a daily newspaper comic that ran for nearly 70 years. Though the 1980 movie does try to remind people, by including images from the comic strip in its opening titles.
• The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed was originally a novel.
• M*A*S*H: Everyone knows the series, and some remember the movie it was based on. How many know the movie was adapted from a series of novels? Not that you'd recognise Hawkeye from the books to the show.
  • Played with on a Saturday Night Live sketch where host Elliot Gould is a guest on a morning talk show.
    Pinky Waxman: "Let's talk about M*A*S*H!
    Leo Waxman: M*A*S*H! It's my favorite show!
    Elliot Gould: Well, I was in the movie, not the TV show...
    Leo Waxman: It was a movie? Who knew?
• The original Match Game had two celebrity panelists, four contestants, and no double entendres. It's the second version, Match Game '73, that everyone remembers. It doesn't help that virtually all of the original series no longer exists on tape. To an extent, not many know that Family Feud was derived from the "Audience Match" endgame of Match Game '73.
• The British version of The Office was popular in America before the American version started airing, but the latter was what truly turned the show into a household name. Due in part to British Brevity, the American version has lasted much longer and has been one of the most popular sitcoms of its era. Although the British version is regarded as a classic, the American version is still the best known. Ricky Gervais often makes self-deprecating jokes about Steve Carell being more famous than he is. The German and French versions also have better ratings than the original in their respective countries.
• By this point, when people think of Mr. Belvedere, they're most likely thinking of Christopher Hewett's '80s sitcom, little realizing that the title character was once played on the big screen by Clifton Webb...or that before that, he was a character in a novel by Gwen Davenport.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer is now best remembered for being the silly and not particularly good film that was later adapted into a very successful franchise anchored by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. Joss Whedon launched the TV show due to dissatisfaction over the Executive Meddling in the film's production and considers his original script for the film, not the film that was actually made, to be canon, basically making this one of the few intentional instances of this trope.
• The '70s sitcom Alice was based on the 1974 movie Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. The movie has been eclipsed not only by the TV show but also by the later movies of its director, Martin Scorsese.
• These days the Dexter TV series is much better known than the Dexter book series. It also affected the font on the front of the books, changing the capital "T" in DEXTER to "t" to resemble the show.
• Stargate SG-1 is far more popular than the film that spawned it, Stargate. SG-1 lasted for ten seasons, spawning two TV sequels, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe; two direct-to-DVD-movies; a remastered version of its pilot episode; numerous novels; and an MMORPG (though this seems to be stuck in Development Hell).
  • Also an FPS, Online TCG, another FPS, and other direct-to-DVD movies for the spin-off that are supposedly going to happen if MGM is ever solvent again.
• Andrew Davies changed the ending of the novel House of Cards in his BBC adaptation. The programme was so much more successful than the (still modestly successful) book that author Michael Dobbs wrote a sequel, To Play the King, and retconned it to fit with the ending of the programme. Then Davies adapted To Play the King and exactly the same thing happened again.
  • Many American fans of the Netflix adaptation House of Cards are likely unaware of the original British series or the book. While the British show was a Cult Classic, it was very short-lived and remained virtually unknown outside of England, and wasn't particularly a household name even there. Even nowadays, British people are likely more familiar with the American adaptation than the British original.
• Although Barry Sonnenfeld claimed The Addams Family was directly based on the original comics, every significant detail was taken from the TV series (for example, the original comic strip never named the characters).
• I, Claudius; the miniseries displaced Robert Graves's novel.
• The 60s TV adaptation of The Green Hornet has displaced the original radio series on which it was based. This is most obvious in the characterization of Kato: in the original radio series Kato was merely Britt Reid's valet and the Hornet's companion, and had no notable martial arts skills. Bruce Lee's portrayal of Kato as martial arts master and all around badass is now so firmly entrenched in the audience's expectations that all subsequent adaptations of the property have that as a prominent part of Kato's characterization.
  • In the 1990s NOW Comics adaptations, the writers went so far as to make the entire Kato family (Ikano Kato, companion of the 30s-40s Hornet, Hayashi Kato, son of Ikano and companion of the 60s and 90s Hornet, and Mishi Kato, half-sister of Hayashi and companion (for a time) of the 90s Hornet) proficient martial artists
    • The above displacement of Kato is so famous he got his own Expy without Green Hornet (the 90s martial arts film, Black Mask, has people comment upon the characters' similarity).
• Many Japanese tourists, upon seeing the Backdraft attraction at Universal Studios, wondered why they were playing the theme music to Ryoori no Tetsujin (known elsewhere as Iron Chef).
• Telly Savalas first played Lt. Kojak (listed in the credits as "Kojack") in an Abby Mann-scripted teleplay about a real-life Miscarriage of Justice called The Marcus-Nelson Murders, which was itself based on a book by Selwyn Raab. However, Raab wrote that book as a non-fiction work, not a novel, so Kojak did debut for television.
• The Adventures of Shirley Holmes was adapted to TV from a series of novels produced by Winklemania Productions, UK. If you grew up in The '90s, it's almost a guarantee you've heard of the series: it aired in over 80 countries and was translated to 8 languages. The books are nowhere near as well-known.
• The original book Deep Love had a large cult following in Japan and while there was a series of popular manga (with multiple spin-offs) the live-action drama was by far more popular.
  • The book actually started out as a series of web novels (keitai shousetsu, i.e. a web novel that was published on a site that was made for cell phone viewing) which got so popular they got novelized.
• Tales from the Crypt was based on a 1950s EC horror comic of the same name, complete with Crypt-Keeper.
• A lot of people know that Sabrina: The Animated Series is an adaptation of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but few people realize that the Live-Action TV sitcom is based off a long-running comic book series, besides those who watched Sabrina and The Groovie Goolies. Archie's had been attempting to avert this in the 2010s. Sabrina's main comic series was on hiatus for years until it was rebooted for Archie Comics (2015), but she has had multiple appearances in the main Archie comics, she has a new cartoon, she's a major character in Afterlife with Archie, and she has a new Darker and Edgier retelling called Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Still, whenever you search or talk about her, most remember the show first.
• The British crime TV series Midsomer Murders has hugely overshadowed the book series by Caroline Graham that it was inspired by and that early episodes were adapted from.
• Another British crime series of the same era, A Touch of Frost, is much better known than the series of novels by R D Wingfield that it was a (significantly bowdlerised) adaptation of.
• Life (2002) started out as a manga, but the TV drama is considerably better-known for whatever reason.
• Dinotopia. Fewer people know about the novels now because of the TV series.
• Highlander falls into this to a point — not everyone realizes there were movies first.
• The Six Million Dollar Man is one of the prime examples of this trope. The TV series was extremely popular and generated many iconic images and sounds; most people are unaware that the TV series was originally based on the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin (despite it being named on the end credits), and the book has become almost entirely forgotten.
• It's not as bad as others, but when most people think of The Odd Couple, the TV series starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman is usually the first version to come to mind instead of the original play (Klugman actually played Oscar on Broadway before the series) or the movie.
• It comes as a shock to many fans of Killing Eve that the show is based on a fairly obscure series of novels called Vilanelle. As the popularity of the show has skyrocketed, the novels have become somewhat more popular. Based on customer reviews from various e-commerce sites, the general consensus seems to be that the novels are decent in concept but the show executes it better.
• How many HBO viewers realize that True Blood was based on Charlaine Harris' imaginative book series, The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries?
• For a while before he made his way to the big screen, many people outside the USA didn't realise that the Hulk was a comic book character that got turned into a TV series.
• 666 Park Avenue: This series is based (very loosely) on a book by Gabriella Pierce. Chances are you have never even heard of the book.
• Wheel of Fortune is a weird example of a show displacing itself. The original version ran from 1975 to 1991 on daytime network television (primarily NBC, except for a stretch from 1989 to early 1991 when it was on CBS instead). The nighttime, syndicated version began in 1983 and has continued ever since. Given that daytime ended so long ago, and given that most of it before the mid-1980s was wiped, the lack of references to daytime is understandable.
• The current versions of Jeopardy! (1984) and The Price Is Right (1972) are actually revivals of older shows. The original Jeopardy! ran from 1964 to 1974 with Art Fleming as host. Try bringing up Bill Cullen as host of The Price is Right (which he did from 1956 to 1965), and you'll get people born within the last thirty years ask "You mean Bob Barker wasn't the first host?"
• Sale of the Century is another example. Most people today recall the 1980s series hosted by Jim Perry and developed for Australian TV by Reg Grundy. It was originally created by Al Howard and aired on NBC from 1969 to 1973 and was hosted by Jack Kelly (1969-71) and Joe Garagiola (1971-73).
• Lingo (2002-07), one of the most successful original shows for GSN, was a revival of a one-season game show from The '80s hosted by Michael Reagan (the original was notorious for the production company going bankrupt and not paying its contestants).
• Chain Reaction (2006-2007) is another GSN example, a revival of a show that aired on NBC in 1980, then USA from 1986-1991. Despite lasting only two seasons, it was rerun heavily in the ensuing years and revived twice, keeping it much fresher in viewers' minds. It got to the point where a 2021 GSN ad promoted reruns of the 2006 version as "the original Chain Reaction", completely ignoring the two previous ones!
• Flight of the Conchords was originally a radio series, but the HBO TV series is much more well-known. There are also cases of fans not realizing that Flight of the Conchords are a real band.
• The "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch originated on At Last the 1948 Show, but when two of the performers, John Cleese and Graham Chapman, later became one-third of Monty Python, they began including the sketch in their live touring stage shows. Thanks both to their popularity (and it being on the album Monty Python Live at Drury Lane and the 1982 concert film Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl) and the relative obscurity of At Last the 1948 Show, the sketch is now more associated with Monty Python.
  • Also, the "Silly Job Interview" from Episode 5 first appeared in the American TV special How to Irritate People, with Graham Chapman's interviewee role being filled instead by Tim Brooke-Taylor.
  • And there's John Philip Sousa's Liberty Bell March, which was chosen to serve as the Theme Tune to the Pythons' series, Monty Python's Flying Circus, due to it being in the public domain. It is now known more as the "Monty Python Song" than as a standalone piece of music, which makes it doubly hilarious when it's performed at campaign rallies and presidential inaugurations.
  • Some Python fans are completely unaware of Flying Circus, only knowing the troupe through its various theatrical films.
• The Walking Dead (2010) TV show is much more well-known than the comic book it is based on.
• Press Your Luck is a Cult Classic in the Game Show field... but how many know that it was actually a Retool of an older game show called Second Chance? Especially since most of Second Chance was erased...
• Many American viewers are unaware that Whose Line Is It Anyway? began in Britain in 1988. Even fewer people—from both countries—know that it started as a radio show.
• Bananas in Pyjamas was based off a song from the Australian children's series Play School. In the original animation, there were six bananas and ten bears, and the Rat In The Hat wasn't present.
• Orange Is the New Black was based on a memoir by Piper Kerman (who Piper Chapman's name was derived from.) Most people aren't aware of the source material, and those who are discovered it through the show.
• The vast majority of audiences who have heard of Perry Mason likely only know the franchise through the landmark 1957-66 television series starring Raymond Burr as the title character (or the slew of Made for TV Movies, again starring Burr, lasting from 1985-1993), unaware that it was based on a series of novels written over the course of four decades by Erle Stanley Gardner. Not only that, but the books and their characters also lent themselves to several theatrical films, a radio series, and even a second television adaptation (though it was less well-received than the first).
• The 60s sitcom Hazel started as a cartoon series by Ted Key, published in the Saturday Evening Post.
• The reality show adaptation of Catfish is much more well known than the documentary it's based on.
• Although there have been some efforts to change this perception, odds are that if you show most people fight scene footage from Super Sentai, they'll think it's from Power Rangers. In some rather extreme cases, this can even apply to other Tokusatsu franchises such as Kamen Rider and Ultra Series, despite the fact that the former follows individual heroes (who sometimes work together) with fiberglass/leather armor as opposed to a team of spandex-clad heroes^note unless one is watching Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, which has suits made from leather, or any pre-Kagaku Sentai Dynaman series, since in Dynaman they began using spandex suits, and the latter is made by an entirely different company.
• Nigeru wa Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu is recognised far better as a live-action drama than as a manga, especially since it launced Gen Hoshino's memorable Dancing Theme "Koi".
• The Girlfriend Experience originated as a 2009 Steven Soderbergh film, which did virtually no business and was regarded by most who saw it as one of Soderbergh's worst films. Chances are most of the TV version's viewers never even realized it was based on the film unless they saw the film's writers credited in the end-of-episode credits.
• Alien Nation the movie was a moderate hit, else it probably wouldn't have been adapted for network TV to begin with. Alien Nation the show only lasted for one season - although this had more to do with financial problems at Fox overall than series underperformance - and 5 TV movies. Nonetheless more people seem familiar with the show than the movie.
• The Syfy series Haven is a loose adaptation of the Stephen King story "The Colorado Kid." In everyone's defense, it's more an Adaptation Expansion, and comes very close to being In Name Only. However, the show does not shy away from the fact it's a King story, and fans will notice the references to his other works sprinkled throughout. Even the titular town is a reference to King's "The Tommyknockers," as the original short story takes place elsewhere.
• Unlike fellow spin-off Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, many people don't seem to realize that Donkey Hodie is a spin-off of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood despite the main titles mentioning this fact, likely because the character it is based on only appeared in 59 episodes of the show. It's gotten to the point where some people have actually questioned why Donkey's friend isn't named Sancho Panda to go with the Don Quijote reference, when the truth is that Purple Panda was a Mister Rogers' Neighborhood character.
• Despite the controversy generated by The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, not that many people know that the show is adapted from the rather obscure The Lord of the Rings Appendices and not from the more known Silmarillion, leading to a lot of confusion of why the show took so many liberties from the source material instead of just adapting the story as it is.
• Midnight Diner presents an interesting case: when it was released internationally on Netflix, it did so under the name Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories. Those who watched it didn't realize they started with the fourth season as there were previously three 10-episode seasons and a feature-length film released before Tokyo Stories, which never left Japan. Netflix eventually brought the first three seasons onto their platform internationally under its original title, Midnight Diner. Simultaneously, many viewers also don't realize the show is actually adapted from a Manga written by Yarō Abe called Shinya Shokudō (深夜食堂; literally, "late night diner").