Bridlington bracing itself for the Dad's Army effect

The new film features some world-class talent, including Sir Michael Gambon, Catherine Zeta Jones, Bill Nighy and Hull-born Sir Tom Courtenay as Lance-Corporal Jones, and was largely shot in and around Bridlington.

The East Yorkshire resort provides the setting for the fictional Walmington-on-Sea and is bracing itself for a huge increase in visitor numbers as cinema-goers look to experience at first hand the silver screen locations.

The movie is largely funded by Screen Yorkshire through the Yorkshire Content Fund, a pool of public and private investment capital set aside to fund TV, film, video game and digital work in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

Like all film investors, Screen Yorkshire have taken something of a gamble because of the lack of certainty of success, critically or at the box office, of the movie but the potential rewards are huge: Creative England estimates that locations which host successful films can earn £1.6 million a year from overseas visitors alone.

History has shown that reworking popular TV classics can be a real challenge for film-makers, and while Bridlington and the rest of Yorkshire holds it breath awaiting the critics’ reviews of the new Dad’s Army film, here’s our assessment of some successful - and not so successful - movie remakes from the last few years:

The Inbetweeners

The rude, crude but extremely funny Channel 4 TV sit-com about four sex-obsessed sixth formers made a modestly successful transition to the big screen with The Inbetweener Movie in 2011 and three years later spawned a major hit with The Inbetweeners 2, which made more money at the box office than any other British film in 2014. The producers of the new Dad’s Army film will be hoping that Blake Harrison, who played stupid boy Neil in The Inbetweeners, can enjoy another hit in the role of Private Pike.

Mission Impossible

The American TV series was a popular success on both sides of the Atlantic between 1966 and 1973 but the five film versions starring Tom Cruise raised the bar to new heights to become enduring classics of the action movie genre. In total, the films have banked more than $560 million at the box office. This is one film franchise that is showing no signs of self destructing.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

Steve Coogan’s comic North Norfolk Digital DJ and former sports presenter Alan Partridge transferred to the silver screen with a level of success that surprised many experts in 2013. The film topped the UK box office, making £3.7m in the UK and returning more than double its production budget. Sadly there are no plans for a follow-up, or even Pauline Calf: The Musical.

Charlie’s Angels

The show that left teenage boys around the world weak-kneed in the 1970s starred Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Ladd and Cheryl Smith and lasted for 110 episodes between 1976 and 1981 before being translated to the big screen in 2000. Critics loved the movie more than cinema-goers did and not even the presence of A-listers Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore could inject credibility.

Brideshead Revisited

It took 25 years for film-makers to pluck up the courage to transfer Evelyn Waugh’s novel from the small screen to the cinema and though the end product was no turkey, the movie merely served to underline how splendid the 1980s TV mini-series starring Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons was. The real star of both the TV series and film was the location for both, Castle Howard, which continues to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, despite the film. Bridlington seems to have little to lose.