NBC to drop 100 people on an island for ridiculous reality show/battle royale competition

It will probably be less violent than PUBG and Fortnite. Probably.

By Sam Barsanti  |  March 4, 2022 | 9:15pm
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NBC to drop 100 people on an island for ridiculous reality show/battle royale competition
The cast of Survivor: Cook Islands, so like this but way more Photo: Frederick M. Brown

You’ve heard of Survivor, right? The show where maybe 20 contestants are dropped onto an island to compete against each other in a series of challenges over the course of a month or two? Well, NBC has a new reality show in the works that makes Surviver look like some kind of a baby bullshit. Called Million Dollar Island and based on a Dutch show, the series drops 100 people on an island for 50 days, and the last person left standing gets $1 million.

That makes it sound a little more PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds/Fortnite/Battle Royale (pick your reference point) than it will end up being, though. There aren’t weapons stashed around the island, for one thing. Also, NBC probably doesn’t want anyone getting murdered so their corpses can be looted for better gear—though that thematic thread is still there in Million Dollar Island.

As explained by The Hollywood Reporter, each Million Dollar Island contestant is given a bracelet signifying $10,000. They’ll get or lose bracelets based on things they do on the island, and “when a player leaves the island” (alive, probably), they have to choose who will get their money bracelets. That means you’ll have to have good relationships with your fellow competitors, or at least make your fellow competitors think you have good relationships with them, a la Survivor master “Boston Rob.”

Speaking of, one of the core aspects of Survivor is knowing the contestants and finding ones to root for or root against. It will be interesting to see how NBC manages to do that with 100 people running around the island, since it will spoil things (and kind of waste the premise) if there are only a dozen or so who we ever actually hear from. The smart move might be to give this thing a very charismatic host who can be the star, but we don’t want to just give out good ideas for free.

 
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