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A television film (also known as a TV film, TV movie, TV-movie, feature-length drama, made-for-TV movie, original movie, movie of the week (MOTW or MOW), single drama, telemovie, or telefilm) is a film that is produced for and originally distributed by a television network.

Origins and history

Though not explicitly labelled as such, there were early precedents for \"TV movies,\" such as the 1957 production of High Tor, starring Bing Crosby and Julie Andrews; and the 1957 version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, starring Van Johnson, one of the first \"family musicals\" made directly for television. Hundreds of live, feature-length dramas aired on television from the 1940s through the 1950s, including such famous productions as 1956's Requiem for a Heavyweight by screenwriter Rod Serling; as was typical but not universal, this live broadcast was preserved on kinescope for rebroadcast.

The term \"made-for-TV movie\" was coined in the United States in the early 1960s as an incentive for movie audiences to stay home and watch what was promoted as the equivalent of a first-run theatrical motion picture. Beginning in 1961 with NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, a prime time network showing of a television premiere of major studio film, the other networks soon copied the format with each of the networks having several 'XXX Night At The Movies' that led to a shortage of film studio product. The first of these made-for-TV movies is generally acknowledged to be See How They Run, which debuted on NBC on 7 October 1964. A previous film, The Killers, starring Lee Marvin and Ronald Reagan, was filmed as a TV-movie, although ' decided it was too violent for television and it was released theatrically instead.

These features originally filled a 90-minute time slot (including commercials), later expanded to two hours, and were usually broadcast as a weekly anthology series (for example, the ABC Movie of the Week). Many early TV movies featured major stars, and some were accorded higher budgets than standard series television programs of the same length, including the major dramatic anthology programs which they came to replace.

Notable examples

The most-watched TV movie of all time was ABC's The Day After, which aired on November 20, 1983, to an estimated audience of 100 million people. The film depicted America after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and was the subject of much controversy and discussion at the time of its release.

Read more at Wikipedia.org