Remember Gilligan’s Island, the venerable 1960s TV series about seven castaways who wind up stranded on a tropical island after a torrential storm shipwrecks their yacht The S.S. Minnow?Warner Bros is charting a course for a feature film based on the series. It will be fashioned as a star vessel for Book Of Mormon‘s Josh Gad.
Gad, Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez will write the script. Lloyd Schwartz, Ross Schwartz, Tracey Silvers and Cathy Silvers will be executive producers. They’re not saying what character Gad would play, but the title character seems a possibility, though he could conceivably play The Skipper.
The original series with the catchy theme song was created by Sherwood Schwartz, and starred Bob Denver as Gilligan, Alan Hale Jr as Skipper, Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer as Thurston and Lovey Howell, Russell Johnson as The Professor, Dawn Wells as Mary Ann, and Tina Louise as Ginger. A three-hour charter boat tour from Honolulu turned into a three-season stay on CBS and three follow-up telepics as the marooned shipmates thrived in syndication with the family audience.
Gad is separately the choice to play manic stand-up comedian Sam Kinison in Kinison, a biopic that will be directed by Borat helmer Larry Charles and produced by David Permut from a script by Rich Wilkes. The movie package was put together by ICM Partners, which reps Gad, the writers and producers. Gad’s managed by Brillstein and lawyered by Ziffren Brittenham. Samit and Hernandez are managed by 3 Arts. The are currently writing on Super Fun Night and worked last season with Gad on 1600 Penn.