IT Can't Happen Here - in Other Media

In Other Media

In 1936, Lewis and John C. Moffitt wrote a stage version, also titled It Can't Happen Here, which is still produced. The stage version premiered on October 27, 1936 in twenty-one U.S. theatres in seventeen states simultaneously, in productions sponsored by the Federal Theater Project.

A 1968 television movie, Shadow on the Land (alternate title: United States: It Can't Happen Here) was produced by Screen Gems as a pilot for a series loosely based on this book.

Inspired by the book, director–producer Kenneth Johnson wrote an adaptation titled Storm Warnings, in 1982. The script was presented to NBC, for production as a television mini-series, but the NBC executives rejected the initial version, claiming it was too "cerebral" for the average American viewer. To make the script more marketable, the American fascists were re-cast as man-eating extraterrestrials, taking the story into the realm of science fiction. The new, re-cast story was the mini-series V, which premiered on May 3, 1983.