Fantasy Island is reimagined as a Saw-like horror movie in trailer for Blumhouse reboot
With remake culture on the decline and reboot culture on the rise, studios are having to get more and more clever about how to best use their IP. The Banana Splits as slasher puppets? Whoa! Punky Brewster, but now she’s a divorced mother of three? Okay! Fantasy Island as a sadistic, Saw-like horror movie? It comes out on Valentine’s Day! It’s also produced by the horror titans at Blumhouse, who just dropped a new trailer for the reimagining of the 40-year old ABC series.
The original followed a mysterious island owner who fulfilled the ultimate fantasy of paying customers…but with a twist. Here, Michael Peña steps into the boat shoes once filled out by Ricardo Montalbán, playing the enigmatic Mr. Roarke as a malevolent overseer who uses the tame fantasies of some to fulfill the more violent ones of others. Lucy Hale, for example, stars as a woman who fantasizes over getting back at her high school bully, but what she assumes to be a hologram of her old nemesis turns out to be all too real.
It’s all a bit of a stretch—okay, it’s a massive stretch—but we’re here for the supporting cast, which includes Party Down’s Ryan Hansen, Silicon Valley’s Jimmy O. Yang, Mr. Robot’s Portia Doubleday, and the great Michael Rooker.
Watch the trailer below.
Fantasy Island drops on February 14, 2020. For kicks, here’s the opening sequence of the original series.