Weiss acquired the TV rights to George R.R. In 2009, two years before it premiered on HBO, TV producers David Benioff and D.B. 'Marooned' is a bonus feature on the Gilligan's Island Season One DVD set. Elements of the original TV pilot were used as flashback sequences in Gilligan's Island's first episode, 'Two on a Raft,' which aired on CBS on September 26, 1964.Īnother notable difference between the pilot and the first official episode was its theme song, which wasn't the memorable 'The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle.' Instead, Star Wars film composer John Williams wrote a Calypso-style song that was used to tell the story of how the tourists were shipwrecked on a deserted island. Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, and Natalie Schafer still appeared in the original pilot episode as Gilligan, The Skipper, and Thurston and Lovey Howell. Russell Johnson (The Professor), Tina Louise (Ginger), and Dawn Wells (Mary Ann) weren't featured in the pilot episode instead, John Gabriel played a high school teacher Kit Smythe and Nancy McCarthy-who played Ginger and Bunny, respectively-were secretaries, not a movie star and/or farm girl. Network executives loved Gilligan's Island, but wanted different actors in some of the key roles. The show's creator, Sherwood Schwartz, made the pilot episode, 'Marooned,' to sell CBS on a new sitcom.

Gilligan's Islandīetween 19, Gilligan's Island aired 98 episodes over three seasons plus countless made-for-TV movies and spinoffs-but its original TV pilot was never shown on broadcast television. The unaired pilot is a bonus feature on the Sherlock Season One DVD set. The writers expanded the script and the crew and stars re-shot the action, but most of the unaired pilot's dialogue was retained in Sherlock's first official episode, 'A Study in Pink,' a loose adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet. The BBC loved it, but wanted to expand the pilot to 90 minutes, with plans to air three 90-minute episodes in 2010. In 2009, TV producers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat produced a 55-minute pilot of a modern-day version of Sherlock Holmes to gauge the interest level in a new TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular detective and Martin Freeman as his assistant, Doctor John Watson. Whether it was a case of networks tweaking the content, showrunners changing the cast, or something else entirely, here are 12 pilots that never made it to air.

But the first episode that audiences see isn't necessarily the first episode that was made. Typically, the introduction to a new television series comes via its pilot episode.

Sherlock pilot episode