Blumhouse Is Making A 'Fantasy Island' Movie
The frightmasters at Blumhouse have come up with their most terrifying idea yet! They're developing...*checks notes*...a Fantasy Island movie! Yes, that's right – a film based on the 1970s Aaron Spelling series about an island where all your dreams can come true...for a price. Jeff Wadlow, who directed Blumhouse's Truth or Dare, will helm the TV-to-film adaptation.
Even if you've never seen a single episode of Fantasy Island, I'm betting you're familiar with it. It was a brightly-lit '70s-'80s TV show that featured Ricardo Montalbán as a mysterious man in a white suit, and Hervé Villechaize as his sidekick who was famous for yelling, "The plane! The plane!" Here are the rather whimsical opening credits.
Fantasy Island
According to Deadline, the folks at Blumhouse took one look at this and said, "We're making that a movie." Truth or Dare director Jeff Wadlow will be behind the camera, and he'll also co-write the film with his Truth or Dare writers Chris Roach and Jillian Jacobs, with Jason Blum producing. Fantasy Island actually began as a two different made-for-TV movies in 1977 and 1978. It was spun-off into a TV series in '78, and ran until 1984.
On Fantasy Island, a mysterious man known only as Mr. Roarke oversaw a mysterious island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. People would fly in from all over the world to Roarke's island, with the intention of having their fantasies come true (for a hefty payment). While Fantasy Island may seem on the surface to be nothing more than a silly, light-hearted romp, the series actually had several supernatural elements. Roarke himself is believed to be immortal, and over the course of the series, he had contact with ghosts, mermaids, genies, the angel of death, and even the devil himself (played by Roddy McDowall). Some people – including star Ricardo Montalbán – even theorized that the magical island might be purgatory. In other words, Fantasy Island was Lost before Lost existed.
Fantasy Island Meets The Devil!
This supernatural bent might be exactly what drew Blumhouse to the project. Blumhouse doesn't only make horror movies, of course, but the fact that the studio is bringing in the Truth or Dare team to handle the material strongly suggests they're going for a horror (or at least paranormal) angle here. If handled right, this actually could turn out to be interesting. Or it could backfire spectacularly – we'll have to wait and see.
Here's a fun side-note: Fantasy Island creator Aaron Spelling came up with the idea for the show as a joke. As his wife Candy told THR, "Aaron was in his office, trying to sell a show to ABC, and I heard him say, 'What would you like me to do? Put some guy on an island and have him grant wishes to people?' He was being sarcastic." From that sarcasm came TV history, and now, a major motion picture. Show business is magical, folks.