Horror is in the DNA of 'Fantasy Island'

A graduate of Dartmouth College, Jeff Wadlow attended the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC, where he conceived and directed his thesis film, The Tower of Babble, which won more than a dozen awards before taking the top prize in the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival. Wadlow used the event's million-dollar grant to make his first feature, Cry Wolf, which was released by Universal Studios. His next feature, the action/drama Never Back Down, beat out big-budget competition to win Best Fight at the MTV Movie Awards, kicking off an MMA franchise with two sequels and counting. Wadlow also developed and executive produced the worldwide hit Non-Stop, starring Liam Neeson, as well as writing the story and co-writing the screenplay for Bloodshot, a feature film starring Vin Diesel that will be released this March from Sony Pictures.

Jeff Wadlow wrote and directed True Memoirs of an International Assassin, staring Kevin James and Andy Garcia, a film that was at the forefront of Netflix's expansion into original features. His preceding writing/directing effort, Kick Ass 2, was named one of the ten best films of the year by Quentin Tarantino, who stated it demonstrated a "real auteur approach". Blumhouse's Fantasy Island, based on the TV show which ran from 1977 to 1984, follows Truth or Dare (2018), Wadlow's first collaboration with producer Jason Blum, which grossed approximately $100m in theaters from a budget of just $3.5m.

Why did you decide to make Fantasy Island?

I made Truth or Dare with [Blumhouse CEO] Jason Blum, and I was starting to think about what I was going to do next. I had an idea for another project that was going to be inspired by Fantasy Island, and Jason heard about it. He went to Sony and got the rights to Fantasy Island, and then he called me up and said, "I've got the rights to Fantasy Island, let's do this together." I responded, "Well, that sounds like a pretty good offer." I mean, let's be honest, not many producers can do things like that. But that's why Jason is one of the best producers in Hollywood.

How does your Fantasy Island movie differ from the original TV show?

Our Fantasy Island is very different and very new, because I tried to approach the property from the point of view of someone who wasn't familiar with the show. To me, there are only two reasons to take a pre-existing IP and turn it into a new film or TV show – it's either because you believe there's a huge fan base for the original material or you just think the original was a good idea. With our movie, I really feel that Fantasy Island falls into the latter category. It was just a fantastic idea. It was a great show with a lot of potential. And so, I wanted to use that potential and expand upon it and be inspired by it to create an entirely new story for a new audience.

What is that premise? What is Fantasy Island?

It's a place where you can go and your deepest desire will be realized, often with unintended consequences, in a way that could potentially cost you your life. The island only has two rules. The first rule is that each guest gets only one fantasy. The second rule is that you must see your fantasy through to its natural conclusion, no matter what.

How did you come up with idea of adding horror elements to that premise?

It's funny, I get asked that question all the time. When it first was announced on the internet that we were doing this, people were like, "Oh, it's a horror re-imagining of Fantasy Island." But Fantasy Island was a dark show. There's an episode where Roddy McDowall plays the devil – that's a horror movie right there! So, to me it's not a re-imagining or even a big stretch, it's in the DNA of the show. I'd say, if not all horror movies, that certainly all great horror movies have an underlying theme of "Be careful what you wish for". It's basically a morality play: if you try to do this thing, something's going to happen. And that is the literal narrative construction of Fantasy Island – characters show up and they say what they want. As a writer, that is a huge gift -- to have an organic scene where someone gets to say what exactly they want. Of course, then it gets twisted, and instead of getting what they want, they get what they need. If they survive, that is…

So, it was organic?

It had to be. Whenever it feels forced, it doesn't work. I'm not going to name any names, but there are some recent movies where they've tried to change genre with the property, and it fails. No matter how big the star, or how much money they spend, it's got to be in the DNA of the underlying material. There's a joke like, "Oh, what's next – Blumhouse's Love Boat?" It's a funny idea, but I actually don't think it's possible, because it's not in the DNA of the show. The horror elements were in the DNA of Fantasy Island. That's why it works.

Is that what makes it a Blumhouse movie?

It's a Blumhouse movie because we're not afraid to go dark. There's definitely a sinister feeling to the film that pervades every scene, and there's a lot of twists, a lot of mystery. There are some questions about what's really going on. For example, Mr. Roarke, who runs the hotel on Fantasy Island, is a really interesting character, because we don't really know who he is when the movie begins, and there are lots of questions that the guests have and that the audience will have. Is he a famous billionaire who bought this island and is now using technology to realize people's fantasies? Is he pumping their drinks full of hallucinogens and doing some sort of weird psychedelic experiment with these guests? Or is he somehow this mystical figure who's maybe made a deal with the devil? Nobody really knows when they show up on the island. Of course, we do eventually reveal who Mr. Roarke is, and I think it's going to surprise a lot of people.

There are quite a few guests checking into the island. Who are they?

The movie begins with four guests arriving on the island, and they each have unique fantasies. There's Melanie, played by Lucy Hale, who wants to get revenge on her high-school bully. There's Patrick, played by Austin Stoll, who's hoping to have a sort of "Call Of Duty" style military adventure, but quickly realizes that he's involved in something far more realistic than he ever imagined, with life-or-death stakes and very real emotional consequences for his character. There's JD, who's brought his adopted brother Brax to the island, they want to have sort of a baller fantasy – to have it all, but quickly learn that when you have it all, usually other people want to take it from you. And finally, there's a Gwen, played by Maggie Q, and when she shows up on the island she's not really sure what she wants from her fantasy. She's got a lot of regret. She's hoping maybe for a do-over. Ultimately, she learns that the do-over is very real, with very real consequences. Soon she begins to regret the moment she chose the do-over… desperate for a second chance at her second chance.

The structure is very different to the TV show, in that the separate stories come together in unexpected ways…

Yes. I feel 99.9% confident saying that, in the original series, they never once had the fantasies cross. If you watch the episodes, you see one guest get off the plane, go one way, then another guest gets off the plane and goes another way. That was by design, because Spelling owned the show and they wanted to be able to cut them down to stand-alone, half-an-hour episodes and sell them overseas. So never once did the fantasies cross. For that reason, it was super-important to me, structurally, that we actually made the fantasies work as if they were in the show for the first hour. I wanted just the fantasies alone to be engaging, entertaining and have a fun twist. Ideally you'd feel like, "Oh, I'm watching a big episode of the show." But I feel that, on some subconscious level, the audience knows they're going to come crashing together at some point, and I wanted to be able to delay that for as long as possible because I wanted to make the show's structure work before we broke that structure.

How did you approach the casting of Mr Roarke?

Ricardo Montalban, who played Mr. Roarke in the original show, is a real hero to the Latino community, and his portrayal of Mr. Roarke is so tied to him. I think you'd be hard pressed to think of other characters that are so completely associate with the actor who played them. I don't think for most of the pop-culture-consuming audience that they could tell you the difference between Roarke and Montalban – he's so much a part of that character. So for that reason it was very important for me that we cast a Latino actor. Michael Peña was my first choice to do that, because I wanted to both honor Ricardo Montalban's portrayal of Roarke but I also knew we needed to do something different, because if I'd cast an older Latino actor and put him in a buttoned-up suit, he would have just been doing an impersonation, and I still wanted to try to offer a fresh spin on Roarke. What's great about Michael Peña is that he honors the legacy of Montalban but he also does something new, and it's because Michael has this incredible ability to do two things at once. Michael Peña's portrayal of Mr. Roarke is both timeless and contemporary. We've got the white suit, but the shirt's untucked. There's no tie. He's both humorous and menacing. There are very few actors who can pull that kind of thing off. His performance helps support this idea that Roarke is a cipher, he's this mysterious, elusive, slightly ominous Willy Wonka. And that for me was really important for the film to work.

What about the accent – whose idea was it?

We went back and forth on that. Originally, I imagined he would have an accent. And then when we cast Michael, we started to go down this path of, like, "Maybe he's this Latino Mark Zuckerberg who's bought this island – maybe that's him." We played around with that for a little bit, and, ultimately, Michael started talking about all these great Mexican actors that he'd encountered while shooting Narcos, and their accents. And even though they are contemporary actors, there's a formality to the way they speak English. Once he started doing that, just immediately, that was Roarke.

The rest of the cast is pretty diverse too. Was that your choice?

I really wanted a diverse, international cast because I want as many people as possible to connect to this film. This film has a really universal message, and that is that when you get your heart's desire, it doesn't always play out the way you'd expect it to. And, ultimately, you learn that maybe you don't deserve what you want – you deserve what you need. And for that message to resonate with the largest group of people possible, I wanted a cast that reflected the population of people who go to the movies. I think we were able to pull that off, because we do have such a diverse and interesting group.

Did you have a particular audience in mind when you were making this? Were you trying to cater to the fans of the original Fantasy Island, or the teenagers of today?

We're certainly trying to check both boxes. My hope is to satisfy fans of the original and also invite a whole new group of filmgoers to the island, so to speak. It's an interesting property to reinterpret. Because it's not a cash grab. It's not like, "Hey, you remember that video game, that you played when you were a kid? Well, now it's a movie!" We can't do that because more than half of the general movie-going population has no idea what Fantasy Island is. They think it's a reality show or something. I don't like the word "re-imagining" because I don't think we are re-imagining it – we're doing our own thing. I think "reintroduction" is probably a better word. The reason why I think it's right for that is because it's just an outstanding idea. So, if you're a fan of the show you're going to remember that: it's a great concept. And if you don't know the show – guess what? It's still a great concept.

Are there many other in-jokes?

I wish I'd had the time or money to do things like that. One of the conscious choices we made was, we said, let's identify the icons of the original show – Mr. Roarke in a white suit, a tropical location. A plane arrives, someone says, "The plane." The guests get off, this is the first time we meet them, and Mr. Roarke says, "Smiles, everyone, smiles." These were all things from the get-go that we said had to be in the movie. After that, if there are any other references or Easter eggs, you can thank the art department!

It's quite a low-budget movie. What was the biggest expense on the production?

The back-flipping jet ski in the party sequence – because it runs on rocket fuel, and you cannot mail rocket fuel. That's pretty much against the law anywhere in the world. Getting the back-flipping jet ski to Fiji was a huge ordeal. I said to my stunt coordinator, Alan D'Antoni, "I need some cool stuff at the party like a zip-line or just some things that you've never seen in a movie before." And he showed me this YouTube video of a guy doing a back flip on a jet ski in a swimming pool. I said "That! I want that! I want a back-flipping jet ski in the movie!" And the line producer, Robin Fisichella, told me, "We can't afford that. We can't do it. It's not going to happen." I smiled back at her, "Figure it out. Please. If anyone can make a back-flipping jet ski happen in this movie, it's you, Robin." Soon we were joking that that was the new curse word. Anytime something went wrong Robin would go, "BACK-FLIPPING-JET-SKI!!!!"

Where do your ideas come from? Do they come to you on a daily basis or only when you're actually writing a script?

A little bit of both. It's a muscle that gets flexed more when I'm writing and I'm in production. But I'm always thinking about interesting set-ups. I'm fascinated by the interaction between the film and the audience. I wrote a paper in film school stating that we don't make movies, we make audience experiences – the movie isn't done until the audience perceives your story through the filter of their own lives. For this reason, I'm always thinking, "How can I hook an audience? How can I play with their expectations? How can I engage them in a scenario? What if I tell them one thing and then we show them something else?" I'm really intrigued by active storytelling. So, I guess, the short answer is that I'm always trying to think of different ways to play that game.

What influences you as a director? Are there any authors or movie directors that have really had an impact on you?

All the greats. I love pop culture, so Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Ridley Scott. Probably the filmmaker I emulate the most is Richard Donner, because I liked that he worked in different genres, that he is not associated with just one thing, that he could do The Omen, that he could do The Goonies, that he could do Lethal Weapon, that he could do Superman – he could work in all these different arenas, but that there were still commonalities. They all had verisimilitude. You believed in them. You never felt like you were watching people play pretend. But there was also always humor -- no matter how dark the material might be.

What would you like audiences to take away from Fantasy Island?

When we started making this movie, the message for fans was, first and foremost, come and have fun. It's an incredible location, it's an amazing cast, and it's a really engaging story, so just come and have a good time. Come to Fantasy Island. It's going to be thrilling. It's going to be scary. It's quite funny, but it's also surprisingly emotional. We just wanted people to go on a trip and have an adventure. But once we'd established that idea, it became much more about reinforcing this theme that you can't live in the past. That's a big idea for the characters in the film. They learn, over the course of the film, that they can't live in regret. They have to move forward, and if they're doing anything other than that, they're going to create problems in their own lives.