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Exclusive: Banijay Entertainment’s adventure reality format Shaolin Heroes has kung fu-kicked its way on to networks in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Banijay Benelux has struck a deal with broadcaster Vtm for a version of the Danish show in Belgium, and Rtl Nederlands has handed SimpelZodiak, another Banijay production house, a greenlight in the Netherlands.

The deals mark the first international adaptations for the format, which was originally created by Banijay’s Danish label Metronome for local broadcaster TV2 last year.

We also hear Banijay-owned Truly Original is developing a U.S. version of the show, and will be taking it out to market this year.

The format sees celebrities embark on a transformational journey to master the ancient martial art of the Shaolin warrior monks. Under the guidance of two Shaolin masters, they face intense trials that test their mental and physical boundaries.

In Denmark, where Season 1 surpassed its...

Exclusive: BBC Studios has invested in the nascent production outfit co-run by the creator of Fox’s Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.

The BBC’s commercial arm has taken an undisclosed minority stake in Samphire Films, which was launched by Sophie Leonard and ex-bbc docs commissioner David Hodgkinson last year.

The partnership will see BBC Studios support Samphire’s growth plans for premium documentary and constructed factual brands in the UK and U.S., while taking first-look global distribution and format rights. At launch six months ago, Samphire said it had landed a co-development deal with a major U.S. network, as well as being in funded development on six projects for British and international broadcasters and streamers.

Leonard is a former creative director at Minnow Films, where she worked across hit Channel 4 series Sas: Who Dares Wins and created the American version, Special Forces World’s Toughest Test,...

Exclusive: Norway’s latest format obsession, The Box, is getting a second season.

Commercial broadcaster TV2 has ordered a second run of the adventure reality format, in which celebrity contestants placed in separate boxes find themselves dumped in the middle of challenges that they know nothing about. Seafood TV will return to produce.

In Norway, the show launched earlier this month, and its first episode has now consolidated to over a million views, according to producers — no mean feat in a country of just over five million people. This makes it the channel’s highest-rated launch of the month, and de facto the year.

In each episode, contestants immediately find themselves in the middle of a challenge when their yellow box opens and must work out what to do, working with the others to achieve the goal. Each ep ends with a pair of contestants engaging in a duel to stay in the game.

Dancing With the Stars is known for the celebrity contestants that give the show its name. However, one media personality, Meghan McCain, has revealed she’s turned down an offer to appear on the show. In fact, she says she was approached three different times, asking to appear on the show.

McCain Gave Two Reasons Against Appearing On The Show

McCain revealed this on her podcast, Citizen McCain, where she revealed she turned down three different offers to appear on the show.

Meghan McCain-YouTube

Meghan McCain is the daughter of late politician John McCain, causing her to be a public figure for most of her life. However, she’s also garnered attention as a blogger, such the blog, McCain Blogette. She is also well-known as a co-host on the talk show, The View.

McCain’s explanation was two-fold, saying, “I just don’t want to publicly humiliate myself.”

“I...

Channel 4 Greenlights ‘Go Back To Where You Came From’ Social Experiment Format

Channel 4 has greenlit Go Back To Where You Came From [working title], a social experiment format in which Brits experience the reality of crossing perilous refugee routes to the UK. Based on an Australian format, the series from Sas: Who Dares Wins producer Minnow Films will drop people whose views on immigration differ wildly into Mogadishu in Somalia and Raqqa in Syria, before they have to live in poverty and travel to countries on migrant routes through Africa, the Middle East and Europe into the UK, facing scenarios and experiences which continually challenge their views. The commission comes with UK immigration proving a hot-button topic for the new Labour government. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK ran on an anti-immigration ticket and illegal border crossings from Europe have been a major part of the public discourse in recent years. Channel...

Fox's 'Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test' has been a hit with US audiences. Watching celebrities get put through their paces physically and be vulnerable emotionally seems to be a sure way to guarantee success. With rumors of Season 3 on the horizon, fans want to know which brave celebs will be part of the cast. But what about the staff members who call the shots? Viewers of the show want to know more about them too. And for several of them, this isn’t their first reality TV rodeo gig, some came directly from the UK reality shows Sas: Who Dares Wins and Celebrity Sas: Who Dares Wins.

Exclusive: Channel 4 has axed documentary series Rescue: Extreme Medics after two seasons.

A Channel 4 spokesman said the decision is unrelated to Channel 4’s much-publicized current financial woes but was instead taken due to ratings and the desire to open up space in the schedules.

Running for two seasons, Rescue from Firecrest Films followed elite clinicians saving lives across the whole of Scotland, sometimes in extremely challenging situations. Episodes in the latest series, which ended last week, included a rally driver crash on the Isle of Mull and an air ambulance having to attend a high-speed road collision. The latest series was watched by an average of around 600,000 overnight viewers per episode and ended with a series high of just shy of 1M, according to Barb data from overnights.tv.

Reports swirled over the weekend about the latest set of Channel 4 cancellations, with Rescue rumored to be culled alongside established hit Naked Attraction.

As Hollywood braces for a potentially long writers strike, Canadians can expect even more reality TV fare beyond popular series like The Voice and Survivor dominating screens in the fall.

That’s because private Canadian broadcasters astride a giant U.S. TV market have primetime grids that, where possible, mirror those of the U.S. networks to boost audience and advertising revenue. So, unsurprisingly, that has upcoming fall-winter TV schedules north of the border upended by the Writers Guild of America strike and a production industry hiatus for scripted series.

“We were probably bidding a bit more on unscripted content than we might have in other years. And that certainly added a complexity to what is already a very hectic and busy week for Canadian buyers,” Troy Reeb, executive vp of broadcast networks at Corus Entertainment, told The Hollywood Reporter after returning from the recent Los Angeles Screenings in Hollywood.

Exclusive: Sas: Who Dares Wins and Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test instructor and writer Remi Adeleke has teamed with Emmy-winner Nick Nanton on Hero, a doc feature exploring perseverance and hope. Nanton’s companies DNA Films and Abundance Studios are teaming to make the feature.

Adeleke and Nanton previously partnered to develop Timothy Ballard’s book Slave Stealers: True Accounts Of Slave Rescues Then & Now as a TV series alongside Ballard, Brian Norton and screenwriter Cody Newton Gifford.

Hero will explore the concept of the hero’s journey through stories of perseverance, hope, and courage in the face of adversity. It’s currently in post-production. Nanton is the director, with former Navy Seal Adeleke producing.

Nanton is known for films such as Disney+’s Dickie V, Netflix’s The Rebound and Prime Video’s Rudy Ruttiger: The Walk On. Actor, director, producer and author Adeleke is a director/instrucutor...

Scott Vickers will write and direct, with the film shooting from July.

Ant Middleton, chief instructor on UK TV series Sas: Who Dares Wins, will make his film debut with action thriller Shelter.

Middleton will also produce with Mark Quinn through their Middleton Quinn Productions, alongside Rise Of The Footsoldier: Origins producer Tiernan Hanby.

Qed International has acquired international sales rights to the title, which will be written and directed by Scott Vickers, writer-director-star of 2018 horror Matriarch.  

An eight-week shoot will start in July.  

Middleton, a former British Forces operator, will play a hitman trapped in a nuclear bunker with his two young daughters,...

Exclusive: Fox is getting the special forces back together.

We hear that the network is set to renew unscripted series Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, which is based on British format Sas: Who Dares Wins, for a second season.

The official word could come as soon as tomorrow, when Fox holds its Upfronts in New York.

The show launched in January and became the top unscripted series debut of the 2022-2023 season with its launch episode, which earned 2.7M total viewers and a 0.6 rating among the 18-49 demographic in delayed viewing, according to live + three-day Nielsen data. It was also Fox’s highest-rated and most-watched Wednesday debut in over a year.

The series sees celebs endure harsh and grueling challenges from the playbook of the actual Special Forces selection process led by Directing Staff (DS) agents Rudy Reyes, Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham, Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox and Remi Adeleke, who comprise an...

Soccer great Carli Lloyd definitely questioned her decision when she arrived for the filming of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test for Fox. There wasn’t any time to prepare for the extreme heat and effort required to perform quasi-military training exercises for the entertainment of TV viewers.

“I didn’t even understand fully what I was getting into until after the contract was signed,” Lloyd said during a panel with fellow contestants Hannah Brown and Kenya Moore at Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted event. “And then once the little snippets of what we were up against came through, I had a little second-guessing. We literally no idea.”

Fellow “recruit” Brown, a former Bachelorette on ABC, was equally gobsmacked by what was in store for her and her fellow celebrity competitors, a list that included Jamie Lynn Spears, Mel B, Dwight Howard, Mike Piazza, Kate Gosselin and Moore. The show...

Distribution

BFI Distribution has acquired Joanna Hogg’s gothic ghost story “The Eternal Daughter,” starring Tilda Swinton in a dual role, for theatrical release in the U.K. and Ireland and will release in cinemas this fall. In the film, an artist and her elderly mother confront long-buried secrets when they return to a former family home, now a hotel haunted by its mysterious past.

The film had its world premiere at Venice in 2022 and also screened at the London and Toronto festivals. Alongside its wider distribution, it will also screen at London’s BFI Southbank as part of a complete Hogg retrospective season, which will run alongside a program of films that have influenced her work. The film is the BFI’s second acquisition from A24, following “God’s Creatures” earlier this year.

Executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Rose Garnett and coproduced by Eimhear McMahon, the film is produced by Hogg alongside Ed Guiney,...

eOne Making TV Adaptation Of Janice Hallet’s ‘The Twyford Code’

eOne is prepping an adaptation of Janice Hallett’s The Twyford Code – the first fruits of the studio’s deal with BAFTA-winning writer-director Paul Andrew Williams. The book is written via automatic transcriptions of recordings made by a former prisoner determined to discover what happened to his teacher. eOne will co-produce with former Sky Studios drama boss Cameron Roach’s Rope Ladder Fiction, with Williams directing and eOne handling global rights. “Janice Hallett’s ingenious second novel has rightly gained a fanbase of epic proportions,” said Sharon Hughff, eOne’s Creative Director, Scripted Television, UK. Deadline revealed eOne’s deal with Williams last year and the Broadchurch director is forging scripted TV shows for all platforms.

Gary Neville Takes ‘The Overlap On Tour’ For Sky Max

English footballer turned pundit Gary Neville is taking his YouTube series The Overlap...

As Fox Entertainment gears up for the fall season, the chief of its unscripted division is most excited about returning to production with scaled-back pandemic restrictions.

“I’m not gonna say Covid’s gone, because it’s definitely not gone, but things have become easier to film,” Rob Wade, president of alternative entertainment and specials, told Variety ahead of the network’s summer 2022 Television Critics Association press tour presentation. (Find Variety‘s interview with Fox’s scripted chief Michael Thorn here.)

“‘We have ‘The Masked Singer’ coming back,” which has been completely reinvented,” Wade said. The series, a singing competition between celebrities whose identities are concealed by elaborate costumes, debuted in 2019. Therefore, only its first two seasons got through production unaffected by Covid-19.

Season 8 will follow what Wade calls a “king or queen of the hill” format, where only one contestant will move on from each episode. After three singers...

Fox has ordered Special Forces: The Ultimate Test (w/t), based on a long-running British format — with short-lived Trump comms chief Anthony Scaramucci, Jamie Lynn Spears & Spice Girl Mel B among the 16 celebs facing a series of grueling challenges.

The show sees celebs endure harsh and grueling challenges from the playbook of the actual Special Forces selection process led by Directing Staff (DS) agents Rudy Reyes, Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham, Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox and Remi Adeleke, who comprise an elite team of ex-special forces operatives.

The series is based on Channel 4’s Sas: Who Dares Wins.

Joining Scaramucci, Spears and Mel B are two-time Super Bowl winner Danny Amendola, The Bachelorette star Hannah Brown, TV chef Tyler Florence, Kate Plus 8 star Kate Gosselin, NBA veteran Dwight Howard, R&b legend Montell Jordan, par skier Gus Kenworthy, Olympics Games gymnast Nastia Liukin, former soccer player Carli Lloyd, actress Beverley Mitchell, The Real Housewives of Atlanta...

Fox has greenlit an American version of “Sas: Who Dares Wins,” an unscripted format from the U.K. The U.S. version has been given the working title “Special Forces: The Ultimate Test,” and features 16 celebrity contestants who are put through a set of challenges meant to emulate special forces training camp.

The news came ahead of the network’s presentation at the Television Critics Association’s virtual summer 2022 press tour.

Dubbed “the ultimate celebrity social experiment” by Fox, “Special Forces: The Ultimate Test” will feature NFL vet Danny Amendola, who won two Super Bowl titles with New England; Spice Girl Mel B.; former “The Bachelorette” Hannah Brown; TV chef Tyler Florence; reality personality Kate Gosselin; NBA champ Dwight Howard; R&b singer and pastor Montell Jordan; skier Gus Kenworthy; gymnast Nastia Liukin; soccer star Carli Lloyd; “7th Heaven” actor Beverley Mitchell; “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Kenya Moore...

Click here to read the full article.

Fox will put a group of celebrities through intense military-style training in a new competition show.

The network has set a January premiere date for Special Forces: The Ultimate Test, which will follow 16 celebs as they take on a series of challenges pulled from the actual special forces selection process under the eye of four former military operatives.

Fox announced the series Wednesday during its time at the Television Critics Association press tour. The network has also added six actors — including Emmy winner Margo Martindale and Emmy nominee Molly Parker — to its courtroom anthology Accused and set a premiere date for its previously announced Lego Masters celebrity holiday edition.

Special Forces is based on a British show, Sas: Who Dares Wins, that has aired 11 cycles (four with celebrities) on Channel 4. The show won’t feature any eliminations — the goal for the participants...

Appointments

Gabriella Carriere has joined Fremantle as group head of strategy, reporting into Andrea Scrosati, group COO and CEO continental Europe. Carriere joins from Sky Italia where she held the positions of Sky Wifi marketing senior director, media and commercial partnerships director and strategy director since joining in 2016. She replaces Van Truong, who held the position for five years and is now head of special projects, reporting into Scrosati and working closely with CEO Jennifer Mullin and the rest of the leadership team.

Scrosati said: “Gabriella is an exceptional talent. I had the great opportunity to work with her in the past and she always struck me for her unique analytical and business skills and understanding of the media market. Her experience and innovative approach will help us continue to define a strategy that will be key to Fremantle’s very ambitious global growth plans.

Carriere added: ““Fremantle is home...

Cineflix Rights Goes On Scripted Sales Spree

UK-based Cineflix Rights has unveiled a batch of scripted library series sales. Mx Player in India and Filmin (Spain) have acquired seasons one and two of Israeli police corruption thriller Manayek, which was originally for Yoav Gross Productions for Kan 11 Network, Israel). Mx Player has also bought the Syfy and Sci-Fi Channel Canada supernatural drama Wynonna Earp. Israel’s Hot is a buyer of dark comedy crime caper Happily Married and Icelandic political drama The Minister. Elsewhere, Talpa Network (Netherlands), Sky Italia and Rai (Italy) have acquired the latest season of CBC drama Coroner, while Acorn TV (India), Sky Italia, and BritBox (Africa) have bought Whitstable Pearl. Ireland’s TG4 has acquired French crime drama Rebecca, while Scotland’s Stv took UK and Ireland rights to Australian suburban psychological thriller Secrets and Lies.

‘Sas: Who Dares Wins’ Put Through Paces On Finnish Streamer...

U.K. broadcaster Channel 4 has extended its strategic partnership with YouTube to make 1000 hours of full Channel 4 and E4 episodes from new and popular series available to watch across Channel 4’s YouTube network in the U.K. and Ireland by the end of 2022.

Some of the hit shows to be made available on YouTube include: “8 Out Of 10 Cats,” “Sas: Who Dares Wins,” “Nikki Grahame: Who Is She?,” “Unapologetic,” “Location, Location, Location,” “Gemma Collins: Self-Harm and Me,” “Davina McCall’s Language of Love,” “Kathy Burke: Money Talks,” “The Dog House” and “Devon & Cornwall.” Some programs will be made available to watch on YouTube 30 days after first being broadcast on Channel 4 and E4, as part of a wider syndication strategy.

Content will start to roll out from May.

The deal will enable Channel 4 to sell its own advertising around these shows, marking the first deal of its kind across the U.

Channel 4 Puts 1,000 Hours Of Shows On YouTube

British broadcaster Channel 4 has signed a deal with YouTube to put 1,000 hours of programming on the Google-owned streaming platform. The agreement expands on an existing partnership between the companies and will allow Channel 4 to sell its own advertising around the show — a first-of-its-kind deal in the UK and Europe. Shows will begin rolling out this month and include 8 Out Of 10 Cats; Location, Location, Location; Nikki Grahame: Who Is She?, Sas: Who Dares Wins and The Dog House. Selected titles will be made available 30 days after their first broadcast on Channel 4 or younger sibling network E4. Channel 4 has been following a five-year ‘Future 4’ strategy to supercharge digital revenues, and its management believes today’s deal represents a “major step” in that process.

Sky Orders Children’s Authors Series ‘Wonderland’; Abacus Media Rights To Sell

Sky Arts has ordered four-part literary documentary series Wonderland.

British broadcaster Channel 4 has said that it will no longer work with Ant Middleton, the star of its successful Sas: Who Dares Wins show, after his comments on the Black Lives Matter movement and the coronavirus pandemic.

Middleton has become a major television star in the UK after first appearing in military survival show Sas: Who Dares Wins in 2015. Since then, he has gone on to front solo projects for Channel 4, including Escape and Extreme Everest. He recently fronted Ant Middleton & Rebel Wilson: Straight Talking for Sky.

But Middleton raised eyebrows last year over comments he made about Black Lives Matter and Covid-19. In a now-deleted tweet posted last June, Middleton wrote: “BLM and Edl are not welcome on our streets, absolute scum. What a great example you are to your future generation. Bravo.”

Middleton later posted an apology video, in which he said he was not referring to the movement as “scum.

Having worked as both a commissioner and an independent producer, Naked Television managing director Fatima Salaria was able to bring insights from both sides of the fence as she addressed the Australian International Documentary Conference (Aidc) on Sunday from the UK.

Salaria has more than two decades of experience in British broadcasting, much of which was spent at BBC, where she worked her way up to commissioning editor for religion and ethics.

During this time, she acted as the principal commissioner for Who Do You Think You Are?, commissioned the BAFTA-winning Muslims Like Us, and curated the Black and British and Big Asian Summer seasons.

She left the pubcaster to become head of factual specialist at Channel 4 in 2019, overseeing the production of popular formats such as Sas: Who Dares Wins, as well as award-winning documentaries 100 Vaginas and The Identical Strangers.

Salaria joined the Fremantle-owned factual and entertainment programming...

In today’s Global Bulletin, DJ Khaled signs on to host the MTV Africa Music Awards Kampala 2021, Newen corrals its production labels as Newen France, Foxtel snags “The Drew Barrymore Show” in Australia, “Sas: Who Dares Wins” gets a Swedish adaptation, BFI Future Film Festival announces this year’s program, San Sebastian Film Festival director José Luis Rebordinos is honored by France’s Ministry of Culture, and Disney Plus and Hotstar Specials reteam to broaden the “Special Ops Universe.”

Awards

Grammy-winning producer, DJ and record exec DJ Khaled will host the MTV Africa Music Awards Kampala 2021 (Mama), broadcasting globally for the first time on MTV Feb. 20. Due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, Khaled will host the virtual ceremony from his home in Miami.

Mama Kampala 2021 features 20 awards handed out to celebrate the best in African talent over the past year. In addition to more general prizes: best male artist, female artist,...

Exclusive: Raw Television, the All3Media-backed producer of Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting An Internet Killer, has bagged another Netflix commission – a series looking at global sporting scandals.

Deadline understands that the company is making Bad Sport (w/t), which will look at a variety of scandalous sporting incidents around the world.

It comes after the company, which produced breakout doc feature Three Identical Strangers, launched its latest Netflix series Fear City: New York vs The Mafia on the streaming service earlier this month.

Three Identical Strangers director Tim Wardle, who joined the company in 2012 as Head of Development, is one of the exec producers of Bad Sport, alongside Alex Marengo, who exec produced Netflix series Killer Ratings, and Raw’s U.S. creative director Adam Hawkins.

Directors on the series include Luke Sewell, who directed BBC series Generation Gifted, and Alex Kiehl, who developed and directed Channel 4’s Sas: Who Dares Wins.

Channel 4 commissioner Fatima Salaria is joining the production ranks, moving to Fremantle-backed “Indian Summer School” producer Naked as managing director.

Salaria takes over for former Naked CEO Simon Andreae, who was recently appointed CEO of Fremantle U.K. Her role will be both creative and commercial, and she will work closely with creative director Tom O’Brien and COO Susie Dark.

Salaria most recently served as head of specialist factual for Channel 4 — a department whose wide-ranging credits include everything from “Sas: Who Dares Wins” to award-wining documentaries “100 Vaginas” and “Three Identical Strangers.”

The commissioner supervised hit series “My Grandparents War” and “Putin: A Russian Spy Story,” greenlit specials including “Ramadan in Lockdown” and “Race Against the Virus,” and shaped the broadcaster’s response to the killing of George Floyd with the “Take Your Knee Off My Neck” series of shorts.

Prior to joining Channel 4, Salaria was commissioning editor for...

Distributor Banijay Rights has unveiled its operational and financial leadership team under new CEO Cathy Payne, with Roisin Thomas continuing as COO and Endemol Shine International’s (Esi) John Richards joining as CFO.

Both report into Payne, the former CEO of Esi, who started in her new role at Banijay Rights on Monday.

Former Banijay Rights CEO Tim Mutimer was confirmed last week as moving across to the role of executive VP for sales and acquisitions for Emea.

Banijay Rights’ parent company, Banijay Group, is in the process of acquiring Endemol Shine in a $2.2 billion deal, which should be complete once the takeover clears regulatory hurdles this summer.

Thomas has been COO at Banijay Rights since 2015, having joined Zodiak Media back in 2011 before its merger with Banijay Group, where she worked as chief of staff to two successive group CEOs. She started her career as a corporate media lawyer and...

Angus Ross.

Seven’s director of network programming Angus Ross explains how the country’s lockdown is benefiting Seven’s channels and catch-up viewing, the need to rejig the schedule, and flags a raft of upcoming Australian shows.

Q: At-home viewing levels are spiking for the free-to-air networks, Foxtel and the streaming services, resulting in big gains for your primary network, particularly 7News and Sunrise, 7Plus and 7Flix?

A: It is great to see viewers turning to Fta, particularly 7News, Sunrise and The Latest. These programs are Australia’s dominant and most trusted news brands. We are seeing viewing spikes across all of our channels and 7Plus is breaking viewing records on a daily basis.

Q: While this lockdown may last for six months, I assume you are hoping many viewers will have ‘rediscovered’ Fta TV and so you may retain a lot of those viewers?

A: We had banked...

Bob Campbell.

Screentime executive chairman Bob Campbell has retired from the production company he co-founded with Des Monaghan 23 years ago.

That marks the end of an era at the company best known for the Underbelly franchise, Pine Gap, Wolf Creek, Cloudstreet, Janet King and Anzac Girls as well as light entertainment fare such as Anh’s Brush with Fame, Rbt, Hughesy, We Have a Problem and The Secret Life of Four Year Olds.

The co-founders sold a controlling stake to French-based entertainment giant Banijay in 2012 and Monaghan stepped down as executive chairman in 2014.

Campbell departed before the completion of Banijay’s takeover of the Endemol Shine Group (Esg), which will create one of the world’s biggest independent production and distribution banners with a catalogue of 85,000 hours.

Rory Callaghan will continue to run Screentime as CEO. In an unrelated move, Screentime executive producer Johnny Lowry has been promoted to head of non-scripted,...

ITV Studios’ non-scripted outfit The Garden has appointed Nicola Brown as director of programs, the company announced on Friday. Brown will join chief executive Magnus Temple, chief creative officer John Hay and managing director Nicola Hill to help grow and deliver the company’s expanding slate of programming.

Brown will begin her new role in March. She joins from Channel 4, where she was a commissioning editor in the specialist factual team, overseeing “Sas: Who Dares Wins” and a raft of new series, including “Meat The Family” and the upcoming Joanne Lees and Peter Falconio crime series, as well as the channel’s new factual digital strand “True Stories.”

Prior to Channel 4, Brown was head of documentaries at Shine and executive producer for the award-winning “Hunted” and “Celebrity Hunted” series, and “The Island with Bear Grylls.” Other production credits include Rdf’s award-winning “The Secret Life of 4, 5 and 6-Year-Olds,” “Educating...

‘Between Two Worlds.’

When James Warburton was appointed CEO of Seven West Media succeeding Tim Worner he vowed to revitalise the Seven Network’s entertainment programming, focusing primarily on Sunday-Thursday primetime.

Warburton looks like delivering on that promise next year with a raft of initiatives including refreshes for My Kitchen Rules and House Rules, Endemol Shine Australia’s action-drama Rfds and Cjz’s four-part investigation of the disappearance of British backpacker Peter Falconio.

The line-up includes Esa’s revival of Big Brother, Screentime’s endurance competition Sas: Who Dares Wins, Eureka Productions’ extreme mini-golf competition Mega Mini Golf and Seven Studios’ Plate of Origin, billed as the “Olympics of cooking.”

Fremantle and Eureka will co-produce a new version of Farmer Wants a Wife, a format which previously aired on the Nine Network, while Fremantle’s Australia’s Got Talent has been renewed for a second season.

“I’ve been clear...

Bear Grylls, the face of survival and outdoor adventure television, and his longtime producing partner, Delbert Shoopman, have teamed with leading global production and distribution powerhouse Banijay Group to launch production company The Natural Studios, which will produce both non-scripted and scripted adventure content.

The company, with Grylls and Shoopman as co-CEOs, is funded by Banijay, which serves as its production and distribution partner. Grylls and Shoopman will maintain full strategic control, Banijay said. The outfit will “develop original IP with mass global appeal and nurture the next generation of adrenaline-fueled TV stars worldwide,” according to a statement.

Grylls said: “At its heart this is about building the ultimate home of adventure programming worldwide. The Natural Studios will be providing a home for the best adventure talent to help them create shows with us that inspire and move people to go for it in their lives and to never give up.

History has slotted December 15 for the premiere of a new military special operations reality series from executive producer Peter Berg (Lone Survivor), his unscripted shingle Film 45 and Bunim/Murray Productions. The Selection: Special Operations Experiment — based on Minnow Films’ format Sas: Who Dares Wins — takes 30 men and women with no military background through the most intense physical and mental challenge of their lives, according to History. The volunteers are…...

To mark the release of Sas: Who Dares Wins on 13th June, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on DVD. The series, which aired on Channel 4 last year, sees a group of ex-Special Forces operators put 30 ordinary men through an Sas selection course, designed and run by them, with every test […]

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