EXCLUSIVE: The company that sells The Traitors format around the world and the Japanese broadcaster behind Ninja Warrior and Takeshi’s Castle have teamed up to create a physical gameshow.
All3Media International and TBS have already partnered to create one show, Lovers or Liars, which launched internationally at MIPTV this week. The duo are getting back in business together to create a second format, which they will bring to market at MIPCOM in October.
Speaking to Deadline at MIPTV, TBS’s Head of Format Development Shunsuke Fukaya and All3Media International’s EVP, Formats & Licensing, Nick Smith, shared the news of the second project, but would not reveal anything else, except that is a new twist on the physical gameshow.
“TBS is known for creating the large scale physical game show like Ninja Warrior and so for the second project together, we want to try out the physical game show,” Fukaya said. “We’re coming at it from a quite different angles, it’s going to feel very fresh,” Smith added.
A pilot of Lovers Or Liars, meanwhile, has just played on TBS in Japan. The show is two years in the making and the original idea hailed from All3Media’s UK prodco North One. The show tasks contestants with spotting the real and fake couples from a selection. The couples, genuine and not, play rounds that see them singing, dancing and even reading love letters to one another. The strapline for the show is: ‘Are they couple up or making it up?.’
Japanese comedian and actor Shitara Osamu hosted the pilot and TBS will soon decide whether to take it to series. All3Media is selling it globally and shopping it to buyers at MIPTV.
The project marked the first co-development deal of its kind for All3Media International. TBS, meanwhile, has partnered with an international producer once before, inking a co-development deal with Smart Dog Media, which produces The Masked Singer in the U.S. The latest deal is a swing at creating shows that will work at home and abroad.
“We do have global formats like Takeshi’s Castle and Ninja Warrior, but they were originally created for a Japanese audience and then happened to find a global audience,” said Fukaya. “Now we want to try the new challenge to create format aimed at the global market from the beginning.”
For All3, the deal with TBS is about tapping into Japanese ingenuity. “We did it because TBS brings something to the table, which is a culture that is very different,” Smith said. They come up with ideas that we would never would so together we can create something that we couldn’t have created on our own.”