Fox Entertainment, Endemol Shine North America and Holywater Tech’s My Drama have teamed up for the company’s first horror scripted microseries inspired by the “Fear Factor” franchise.
The scripted vertical series marks several firsts for the microdrama platform and Fox. The untitled horror program is the network’s first unscripted-to-scripted television franchise extension, “Fear Factor”‘s first scripted adaptation and the first horror series for My Drama.
The “Fear Factor” scripted series will premiere exclusively on My Drama and will consist of 30 three-minute episodes.
“Few franchises are as naturally built for vertical as ‘Fear Factor,'” said Michael Heyerman, EVP of unscripted series at Endemol Shine North America. “Vertical storytelling is creating a new language for entertainment, one built on immediacy, intimacy and serialized discovery, and ‘Fear Factor’ already speaks it fluently.”
The new vertical series will take place during prep week on a remote horror television set, where a practical effects artist and her crew unleash a haunted fortune-telling machine, according to the series logline. The machine forces them into personalized death trials, leaving the survivors to uncover its tragic origins before it claims everyone they love.
Fox Entertainment Studios and Endemol Shine North America will produce the vertical series. It will debut on Holywater Tech’s My Drama platform with worldwide distribution managed by FOX Entertainment Global. A release date has not been set.
“‘Fear Factor’ has always tapped into something primal: what scares us, how far we’ll go and what happens when we’re forced to confront our fears,” Hannah Pillemer, head of scripted at Fox Entertainment Studios, said. “Michael Thorn and his network team saw the opportunity to bring this iconic franchise to Fox in a bold new way, successfully introducing ‘House of Fear’ and the outrageous Johnny Knoxville to a whole new generation of fans.”
“That tremendous response has opened the door to take Fear Factor somewhere it has never gone before: becoming the first unscripted television franchise to make the leap into original scripted storytelling,” she added.
“Fear Factor” originally premiered in 2001 and ran for seven seasons. Fox revived the series this year with the “House of Fear” spinoff, hosted by Johnny Knoxville. It has been picked up for Season 2 and will premiere next year.
Fox Entertainment has an equity stake in Holywater’s vertical platform. The network has also licensed microseries from creator Dhar Mann and Kevin Hart’s production company Hartbeat.
