We’ve all been on the fence with Sony Pictures and Blumhouse taking the iconic ‘Fantasy Island‘ television series and having it translated to the big screen but one great piece of casting news is that Michael Peña (‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’, ‘A Wrinkle in Time’) has been tapped to play Mr. Roarke. He may be a bit younger than Ricardo Montalban was when the show debuted in 1978 on ABC, but Peña has proven he can play a variety of solid roles and director Jeff Wadlow (‘Truth or Dare’) may have picked the perfect choice for the role.
Wadlow co-wrote the upcoming adaptation with Chris Roach and Jillian Jacobs.
In the series, we saw Mr. Roarke as the overseer of the island which would grant fantasies to visitors for a price and was helped by his sidekick Tattoo who was played by Hervé Villechaize. On the show, we saw that the guests were wealthy visitors would pay $50,000 (adjusted for inflation, that would be over $200,000) in order to experience their greatest fantasy on this mystical island.
The one controversial decision so far for fans of the show is that there are indications we won’t see Tattoo in this iteration. Of course, the character description for Tattoo could have always been left off the early details which were revealed.
In the series, there was a mixture of dark themes and the supernatural as we saw visitors living out their fantasy wishes. While not much has been revealed about the series so far, if Blumhouse is involved it wouldn’t be surprising to see this end up as being more of a horror film.
Are you looking forward to a more modern take on ‘Fantasy Island’? Do you think that we’ll be getting a straight up horror movie with this film? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: Deadline Hollywood
