New Twists For "Survivor 3"
Wednesday, July 25, 2001
The third "Survivor" competition, dubbed "Survivor: Africa" to denote its ongoing production location in Kenya, will launch Oct. 11 and end with a two-hour episode on Jan. 10, it was announced yesterday.
CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves said the series would consist of 13 installments, as opposed to 14 for the previous Australia-based series, which will leave four contestants still in contention for the $1 million prize on the show's final night.
CBS and executive producer Mark Burnett are considering the possibility of adding a so-called "catch-up" show — using clips from previous episodes — midway through the series' run, Moonves said.
The CBS executive said "Survivor: Africa" includes at least some participants who are overweight and older than 50. "There are a lot of people who aren't gorgeous."
The play of the game will be essentially the same, he said, but with a couple of twists. "There will be something different, but you won't know about it until you're into the show for a little while," he said. "There are a few curve balls in it that I think will be pretty exciting."
Moonves declined to be more specific.
A fourth "Survivor," location and subtitle not yet disclosed, probably will premiere shortly after the Winter Olympics end in Salt Lake City this February, he said. Its conclusion would be timed to coincide with the end of the television season in late May.
However, planning for a possible celebrity edition of "Survivor" is on hold, although Moonves was happy to joke about the concept.
"With a celebrity," he said, "it'd be, like, 10 days. How much longer could they go? Ten days without their assistants, no room service, no showers, no cell phones, no fax machines. And the idea is, every two days, you vote somebody off.
"Now, the truth of the matter is, for a lot of celebrities, that's the thing that scares the heck out of them. To be rejected in front of 20 million people would be devastating for an actor."
