The success of syndicated reruns of Gilligan's Island had convinced series creator-executive producer Sherwood Schwartz that a live-action reunion could actually work.
Four years earlier, Schwartz had contracted with Filmation to adapt the series as a Saturday morning cartoon, The New Adventures of Gilligan, with all except Dawn Wells (Mary Ann) & Tina Louise (Ginger) returning. One season's worth of episodes were produced, and then syndicated as part of a larger package that Filmation sold to stations in 1978.
Not long after that came the first of what would be three Gilligan TV-movies, but, as with the cartoon, it wasn't for CBS. The cartoon aired on ABC, while NBC landed the movie series. Wells returned, but Louise, adamant about not returning at all to avoid typecasting, was replaced by Judith Baldwin for "Rescue From Gilligan's Island", which aired as a 2-part miniseries on NBC in October 1978 before being rerun as a full-length movie. Schwartz, of course, would also place the first revival of his other franchise, The Brady Bunch, at NBC a couple of years later.
The castaways finally come home, 11 years after the original series had ended, and the plot suggests that the series was set a year prior to airing (set in 1963, while the show ran from 1964-7). Returning to civilization presents a new set of problems for the gang.....
In 1992, a second Gilligan SatAM cartoon was produced for CBS entitled "Gilligan's Planet". On this series, the castaways finally made it off of the island (again!) via a makeshift rocket, only to find themselves marooned again, only this time on an alien world. Ms. Wells voiced both Mary Ann and Ginger for this series. RIP.
ReplyDeleteI covered that over at Saturday Morning Archives a ways back. They, I think recycled New Adventures scripts, swapping out the island for a distant planet.
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