YOU TUBE KILLED THE VIDEO STAR: MrBeast on Prime Video
The West loves Eastern formats - French Power
MRBEAST ON PRIME VIDEO
It’s the news of the week: Amazon’s Prime Video has officially unveiled its partnership with MrBeast. For those few who don’t know him, MrBeast is maybe the most influential social media superstar: with over 245 million subscribers, he is the most-subscribed individual on YouTube, and the second-most-subscribed channel overall (after the Indian record label T-Series).
But that's not all: Prime Video wanted to overdo it, producing “the biggest reality competition series ever” with the “biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming”: Beast Games - that’s the title of the show - will see 1,000 contestants competing for a US$5 million cash prize, surpassing the previous record of the Netflix’s series Squid Game: The Challenge, that gave away a prize of “only” US$4.56m. (Prime Time also overdid it by announcing the number of countries where the show will be available - 240, but in fact the world’s nations are less than 200 ; ).
MrBeast himself (whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson) will exec produce - together with Amazon MGM Studio - and host the series, which is described as a “fast-paced and high-production format.” The greenlight comes less than two months after reports emerged that MrBeast was in talks with Amazon to sign a deal for nearly US$100m.
Exaggerations aside, the operation seems to be very interesting indeed, and confirm the phenomenon of ‘tele-digitalisation’, i.e. the inevitable process of the gradual shift from linear channels to the digital dimension (see FE 16th February, about the special edition of “classic” tv show The Chase performed by The Sidemen, Europe’s biggest YouTube creator collective).
Moreover, the world of MrBeast - made up of elaborate and extreme challenges, with large giveaways and prizes (here a famous example) - fits perfectly into such an operation, because it is very suitable for a television program (even though these ‘old’ terms no longer make much sense in the contemporary fluid cross-platform audiovisual context). Television is changing, not necessarily for the worse.
THE WEST LOVES EASTERN FORMATS
Recently, a number of Western prodcos have created formats in partnership with colleagues from the Far-East, or have acquired the global production rights of Far-East formats, or are developing Far East-related formats. A long-established trend whereby Western countries are increasingly interested in the creativity of Japan and South Korea.
Lovers or Liars?, co-developped by All3Media International and Tokyo Broadcasting System Television (TBS) in Japan, belongs to the first group. The format - which is part of the "‘guessing-game’ subgenre - is quite simple and addictive to play (but not very original, to tell the truth): it watches a celebrity panel trying to identify the real (married) couple from among other couples that have only met for the first time that day. The pilot premieres in Japan on TBS today March 23 and the show will be launched at a showcase of the upcoming MIPFormats.
Furthermore, Fremantle has taken on the global production rights to the original Japanese Freeze, a comedy game originally developed and produced by FANY Studio and Yoshimoto Kogyo for Prime Video, where it ran for two years.
In this funny format, players enter a closed room and must ‘freeze’ until the presenter releases them. With traps and tricks along the way that provoke reactions of the players, only those who remain completely still will survive: those who move, laugh or react the most will be eliminated, with the last player remaining who can claim the grand prize.
Finally, LA producer-distributor The Gurin Company (TGC) partnered with LA-based Titan Content (a prodco launched in November by Nikki Semin Han, an influential figure in the world of K-pop and former CEO of talent agency SM Entertainment) to develop K-Pop Dream (working title), a talent search format that aims to discover Korean pop (K-pop) stars in cities across the US. The show will go behind the scenes of the entire process, from the discovery to the debut show of the new group.
The Far Eastern wind blows stronger than ever.
FRENCH POWER
The Power - Qui A le Pouvoir (“who has the power”) is a brand-new reality-competition series by producers Dreamspark and Studio 89, airing on April 1st on M6 Group-owned W9 in France.
The format (here a brief teaser with the cast) will see 13 celebrity contestants living together in a remote location in southern Spain, “monitored” by AI drones (yes, there is a “touch” of AI in this case too…). Each week, one participant will be chosen by chance to be the “Power Player”, who will have all the power in the house and decide who sleeps where, who eats what, who has what privileges or “handicaps”. But they must keep secret their identity at all costs.
At the end of the week, the Power Player will decide which player will be eliminated. Unless the player unmasks the Power Player, in which case it is the Power Player to be eliminated.
Difficult to judge from this relatively little news, but it seems a good combination of a innovative visual aspect and a “classic” and effective reality structure.
NEWS IN A NUTSHELL
Survival game show Mauvais Joueurs ("bad players") is going to premiere on Netlix France Wednesday 17th April
The ‘father’ of the adventure game, the Belgian Peking Express, is airing this spring in Spain on HBO Max, produced by Warner Bros. ITVP España
BBC’s classic quiz El Rival Más Débil (The Weakest Link) will be on air in Spain, on Cuatro or even Telecinco, after a 20-years hiatus (it was on air from 2002 to 2004 on public channel La1)
The brand-new renovation series Juntos en Acción (‘together in action’), produced by Warner Bros. Discovery’s U.S. Hispanic division in collaboration with Omnicom Media Group, will soon be on air
Another home renovation series, Going Home with Tyler Cameron, is airing on Prime Video April 18: it follows the reality TV star and former The Bachelorette heartthrob as he builds his new construction business from scratch
Can’t Stop Media announces that hit format The A Talks (initially launched in France as Les Rencontres du Papotin) is being adapted in Sweden where SVT1 has commissioned a first season of 6 episodes
France 2 is broadcasting an evening event tomorrow, Saturday 23 March, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Sidaction, the non-profit organisation dedicated to the fight against AIDS
Jimmy Kimmel is producing Cannabis Series for Hulu High Hopes, debuting April 20, will follow Belarus-born brothers Slava and Mishka and their stoned crew running a pot shop in L.A.
EstrellaTV, the Spanish-language multiplatform network, will premiere the world's leading Spanish talk show, El Hormiguero, on Monday, April 8
Netflix has commissioned a slate of new UK originals, across scripted and unscripted: of this second group, Bear Hunt (working title) should be mentioned, that will feature survival expert Grylls preying on an unlikely group of British celebrities in the Central American jungle
ITV has tapped David Tennant to front its new reality game show Genius Game, produced by Banijay UK’s Remarkable Entertainment; the format was originally created by Korean CJ ENM
Telemundo prepares the third series of culinary reality show Top Chef VIP that will feature a new group of renowned personalities putting their culinary skills to the test
