The old Fantasy Island TV show seems to be enjoying a weird resurgence these days, with Peter Dinklage set to play Hervé Villechaize in an HBO movie about the iconic Fantasy Island sidekick (and specifically about a particularly dramatic interview he gave shortly before his death), and now Michael Peña is set to star as Mr. Roarke in a Fantasy Island movie from Sony and Blumhouse. The movie will be directed by Blumhouse’s Truth Or Dare’s Jeff Wadlow, which is a worrying sign (as Truth Or Dare was pretty bad), but it also suggests that Sony might be planning to take this in a more directly horror-themed direction. The original show, which was about an island where people could experience their fantasies, touched on some dark stuff, but making it a more literal “be careful what you wish for” thing seems like an interesting direction.
Anyway, Peña might have some tough work ahead of him, considering how memorable Ricardo Montalbán’s Mr. Roarke was on the original show, but maybe the general public is less aware of Fantasy Island than the movie and TV studios think they are.