New Reality Show to Be Based
on Gilligan's Island
Hollywood, CA | Just as CBS announces a reality-series version of The Beverly Hillbillies, and Fox Broadcasting says a nonfiction comedy that mirrors Green Acres is in development, Warner's WB Network revealed plans to use Gilligan's Island as it's first foray into the reality arena.
The show will take seven average people and strand them on a tropical island. Cameras will document the "castaways" trying to make due only with what the island provides, and a few meager provisions salvaged from the "wreckage" of the S. S. Minnow.
"This will be unique among all other reality shows," executive producer Aaron Spelling explained. "Instead of contestants being voted off the island, each episode will end with their efforts to leave being thwarted by some unforeseen calamity."
Spelling went on to explain that one of the "challenges" will be to memorize scripted dialogue each week. "And we'll be throwing in some unexpected plot twists too - like robots and Russian cosmonauts," Spelling promised.
The WB studio has been holding open auditions for a professor, a farm girl, a wealthy older married couple and, of course, a portly skipper and inept first mate. Spelling announced the role of female "movie star" has already been taken by his daughter Tory.
But Spelling denied suggestions that the show is simply a remake of old Gilligan scripts, and that he is only producing the series to get his daughter out of the house.
