James Gunn and Charlie Kaufman almost turned a classic sitcom into a cannibal movie: “A true story”
Back in the days before he became the co-CEO of a studio and dedicated his entire professional life to superheroes, James Gunn made a lot of weird shit. Meanwhile, Charlie Kaufman has always made weird shit, so the prospect of the pair making a movie together would inevitably revolve around weird shit.
It’s been quite the journey for Gunn, who kicked off his career by sitting under the Troma learning tree, which led him to a slew of unusual and offbeat projects like co-writing and associate directing Tromeo and Juliet, scripting the live-action Scooby-Doo films, penning Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, helming the body horror, Slither, and fronting the web series, James Gunn’s PG Porn.
Around the same time, Kaufman was building his reputation as one of cinema’s most idiosyncratic scribes, earning Academy Award nominations for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, before winning an Oscar for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, before his forays into directing led to him confessing, or perhaps realising, that there’s only so far you can take such a bespoke style before people lose interest.
He hasn’t been behind the camera since I’m Thinking of Ending Things, with Netflix’s animated fantasy, Orion and the Dark, his only feature-length script to have been made since then, whereas Gunn is arguably one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, since he holds the keys to a multi-billion-dollar comic book empire and has the final say on what does and doesn’t go into production.
They’ve taken off in vastly different trajectories, but in another timeline, they would have joined forces. What sort of mindfuckery would need to be a foot to have James Gunn returning to his exploitation-inspired roots to take the reins on a Charlie Kaufman screenplay? Refitting the beloved 1960s sitcom, Gilligan’s Island, into a cannibalistic horror flick, of course.
Across three seasons and 98 episodes, audiences flocked to witness the latest weekly misadventures of seven shipwrecked castaways as they try to carve out a life on a remote and uninhabited island. It’s a fairly straightforward premise, and the execution was very much along the same lines, so, naturally, Kaufman imagined them eating each other for sustenance.
“A true story: In the late ’90s, screenwriting GOAT Charlie Kaufman pitched a movie version of Gilligan’s Island where the islanders, starving and desperate, started killing and eating each other,” Gunn shared on social media. “Warner Bros wanted to do it, but Sherwood Schwartz, the creator, said, ‘No way.'”
Understandably, the Gilligan’s Island creator and composer of the show’s theme tune didn’t want to see his baby turned into a masochistic and gruesome nightmare, regardless of there being an Oscar-winning writer attached. After he died in 2011, Gunn made some moves to breathe new life into the project, but he ran into a very similar roadblock.
“After Guardians [of the Galaxy], I tried to resurrect the idea, and wanted to direct,” the filmmaker revealed. “It seemed Warners and Charlie were interested, but this time, the estate of the late Sherwood Schwartz nixed it. Anyway, if the Schwartz estate changes their mind, I’m here.” He’s part of the studio’s hierarchy now, so if the estate does eventually relent, it can’t be ruled out that Gunn and Kaufman’s cannibalistic Gilligan’s Island may see the light of day.
