Six hit movie and TV shows that were actually spin-offs

Have you ever watched something and liked a character so much that you wanted to know more about their backstory or what happened to them after the film or programme?

Make way for the spin-off, a format that has been shining a spotlight on minor characters for decades and some can become really popular.

Grab your popcorn and join BBC Bitesize as we take a look at some of the hit movies and TV shows that were spin-offs.

Cobra Kai

One of the most successful spin-offs of recent times is Cobra Kai. Its inspiration, 1980s martial arts movie The Karate Kid, followed the adventures of 17-year-old Daniel (Ralph Macchio) as he moved to a new town, was tormented by bullies and learned karate in order to beat them in a tournament.

The movie’s universal theme, of the good guy triumphing over the odds, secured it millions of fans. Among them were Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg who, decades after the movie was released, conceived the TV spin-off Cobra Kai.

Though it featured some original characters, it focused on a supporting character from the original, Daniel’s arch-enemy Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). It expanded his story while introducing a whole new cast of younger characters.

Shaun the Sheep

Placing a familiar character in a completely new environment is a popular way of creating a successful spin-off. And that’s exactly what Wallace & Gromit creators Aardman Studios did when they decided to give Shaun the Sheep his own movie in 2015.

The character already had a TV series of his own, but when it came to his big screen debut directors Mark Burton and Richard Starzak decided to relocate the action to the big city, where our wooly hero has to save his friendly farmer, who has lost his memory.

“I guess the first idea was to take the sheep out of their comfort zone,” said Starzak in an online interview with Flickering Myth, an online magazine, in 2015. “And what’s the most opposite to a farm – the big city. And we had a lot of fun in the early stages generating silly ideas of what could happen, making ourselves laugh and patting ourselves on the back.”

Puss in Boots

Audiences around the world flocked to see Shrek when it was released in 2001. It was a huge box-office hit and even won the first Oscar for Best Animated Film. The film series seemed to have concluded with Shrek Forever After, the fourth film in the franchise, in 2010.

So, time for a spin-off. One of the most popular characters from the original films was Puss in Boots, voiced by legendary Spanish actor Antonio Banderas.

Director Chris Miller decided that Puss would be the perfect character to explore further. “I was always fascinated by where Puss had been before,” he said in an interview with Fantasy Magazine in 2011. “In the Shrek films, he was always referring to some great adventure. But they were always just little snippets of experience. I wanted to know, where’d he get those boots, where’d he get that accent? What’s the deal with that guy?”.

Audiences were as intrigued as Miller, and Puss in Boots was a hit and spawned a TV spin-off and a sequel movie.

Creed

Audiences had first been introduced to struggling, working-class boxer Rocky Balboa (played by Sylvester Stallone) in the 1976 movie Rocky. No fewer than four sequels followed, the last one being Rocky V in 1990. In 2006, Stallone revisited the character in the reboot Rocky Balboa in which the the ageing fighter came out of retirement for one last fight.

The film was a box-office success and reignited interest in the dormant franchise. But given the character was now in his 60s, a new story needed to be found for the spin-off. For Creed, released in 2015, director Ryan Coogler went back to the first movie, which featured Carl Weathers as Rocky’s opponent, Apollo Creed. The new story was about Creed’s son, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan), who is trained in the movie by Rocky.

The spin-off gave the fighting franchise a new lease of life, itself spawning two sequels.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

By the time Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was released in 2016 there had been seven Star Wars movies including George Lucas’s first and second trilogies and then reboot, The Force Awakens, in 2015.

Though it featured cameo appearances from droids C-3PO and R2-D2, Rogue One pursued a new story about rebel soldiers attempting to steal plans for the Empire’s Death Star.

The movie was a hit, generating over $1 billion at the box office. However, the subsequent movie spin-off was less successful. Solo: A Star Wars Story, released in 2018, was a box office disappointment.

But if the movie spin-offs have had mixed success, the franchise’s multiple TV spin-offs have been more popular - with The Mandalorian and Andor being the most successful.

Holby City

Holby City was one of the most successful British medical dramas of all time, running for 23 years and over 1,000 episodes.

But in fact the show was actually a spin-off from the even longer-running show Casualty, which had first aired in 1986. The idea for a Casualty spin-off, set in the same fictional hospital, emerged when the popularity of the show led producers and writers to want to explore what happened to the patients once they were taken away from A&E to the surgical wards.

The show was cancelled, amidst vocal disappointment from its fans, in 2022. But Casualty continues its incredible success. Now 39 years old, it is the longest-running prime-time medical show in the world.

This article was published in January 2025