Gen X kids grew up with a steady after-school diet of Gilligan’s Island, a show that, despite its pop-culture ubiquity, only lasted three seasons. Maybe that was because there were only so many ways for seven castaways to try (and fail) to escape a desert island. But the show’s producer, Sherwood Schwartz, foresaw that shortcoming and had plans to mix it up if the show continued to get renewed.
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Only one more season of being stranded was the plan, Schwartz told the Muncie Evening News via MeTV. “I hoped from the outset that the show would go for four years with them on the island,” he explained. “But I’ve had a projected escape in the back of my mind.”
Schwartz’s bonkers plan sounds like a cross between Fantasy Island and White Lotus. “Should they get rescued, or should the ratings go down, or should we feel we’re getting into a rut, then I’d turn the island into a resort hotel,” he said. “Jim Backus (who played Thurston Howell III) would operate it because he’s the rich man with the know-how. Gilligan and the Skipper would operate the boat to bring in the guests, and the rest of the cast would work at the hotel in various executive jobs.”
Sure, that sounds great. It would be like the cast of Lost finding their way home and everyone getting jobs at an ad agency or paper supply office. But seriously. After years of being trapped without resources, wouldn’t Ginger want to go back to her acting career? Why wouldn’t Mary Ann return to Kansas? The Professor would give up science for a job as a resort concierge? Of course, Gilligan’s Island didn’t become a Nick at Nite staple by making sense.
The crazy thing? Schwartz actually made his inane idea come true. A decade after the show ended, Gilligan’s Island returned in an increasingly silly/stupid series of made-for-TV movies. In the first, Rescue From Gilligan’s Island, the seven castaways find their way home, only to get shipwrecked on the same island after a storm during a reunion cruise. Did the Skipper ever check the weather report before he got behind the wheel?
It was the second movie, 1979’s Castaways on Gilligan’s Island, that saw Schwartz’s dream become reality: The gang gets rescued — again — and this time, the Howells turn the joint into a luxury resort.
Think it can’t get any goofier? Then you haven’t seen 1981’s Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island, with the Clown Princes of Basketball arriving to foil the scheme of crooked Martin Landau. All of these made-for-TV movies were stealth pilots for Schwartz’s imagined continuation of the series, but viewers weren’t interested.
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Schwartz, who passed away in 2011, wasn’t quite done yet, though. There were cartoon versions, a stage musical written by Schwartz’s kid and a reality show where people were stranded on an island for fun and prizes. Charlie Kaufman had an idea where the castaways became cannibals. And as recently as 2008, Schwartz was pitching a Gilligan’s Island movie with Michael Cera in the lead role and Beyoncé as Ginger Grant.
Thankfully, we were all spared that version.