Pepsi’s commercials featuring NBA star Kyrie Irving as the elderly basketball superstar Uncle Drew have become so popular that they spawned a full-length movie. This isn’t the first 30-second ad to inspire a full-length movie or TV series.
“The Steeler and the Pittsburgh Kid” (1981)
This NBC TV movie was based o one of the most famous Super Bowl commercials of all time, in which Pittsburgh Steelers star “Mean” Joe Greene, known as one of the most intimidating defensive linemen in the NFL, hands a starstruck kid his towel after the boy offers him a Coke. The kid was played by Henry Thomas, who would become a big star a year later as Elliott in “E.T.”