IESB is reporting that Jay Scherick and David Ronn, the poison pens behind Norbit, have been brought in to do a rewrite on a big screen version of old anthology show Fantasy Island, which will apparently star Eddie Murphy in a number of roles.
My bet is that he’ll play just about every role – the basic set up of any episode of Fantasy Island had a number of people coming to the titular tropical getaway and having a chance to live out their dreams, and usually learn something about themselves (always something very, very lame). Each of the people would have their own story, and Murphy could easily play the main character in every single one of these stories, as well as Mr. Roarke, the guy who runs Fantasy Island and who was played by Ricardo Montalban in the original show and Malcolm McDowell in the bomb TV remake that happened a couple of years ago. I would bet that the people who come to the island this go round will be a racially, sexually and weightily diverse group of people, making this like Eddie Murphy’s Greatest Character Hits. And if you think that he won’t be getting shrunk down via CGI to play the dwarfish Tattoo, you’re out of your mind.
My other bet is that this film will be totally fucking insufferable. And probably a major hit. The original show mixed comedic and dramatic storylines – will this version do the same? I hope to see a movie that takes the Serious Eddie of Dreamgirls and matches him with the Wacky Eddie of The Nutty Professor. This could be a tragedy of immense proportions.