While CBS is currently airing “Survivor” Season 47 and the latter half of “Big Brother” 26 this fall, “The Amazing Race” will be taking a brief hiatus in favor of a new entry on the network’s reality TV lineup.
“The Summit” premieres Sunday night (as a sneak peek before moving to its regular Wednesday timeslot on Oct. 9), and showrunner Kevin Lee is prepared to earn both the respect and the viewership of fans of the channel’s existing trifecta.
“All of their reality competition shows do really well and they don’t have a lot of real estate for new shows, so giving us that real estate, especially with ‘Survivor’ as the lead in, is a huge honor,” he told TheWrap. “Fans of ‘Survivor’ have been with it for years and years and years and just because they see a commercial for our show on ‘Survivor’ doesn’t mean they’re coming to us, so I think we’ve got to earn it.”
“The Summit” throws 16 (mostly) ordinary Americans — and viewers — straight into a 100-plus-mile, 14-day trek up a mountain in New Zealand with their share of $1 million hanging in the balance. The twist: The climbers can only win if they meet their 2-week deadline as a team, meaning they’ll have to cut the weaker links — or perhaps, make more devious decisions — along the way. So what exactly sets the show apart from existing social strategy shows, aside from the colder climate?
“It looks so different than ‘Survivor’ — a lot of the mechanisms, like voting in the open, face to face; the fact that multiple cast members could win, or one cast member could win; they have to cooperate together as a group to get to the top, but they’re also competing against the people,” Lee explained. “There’s a lot of differences that I think ‘Survivor’ fans will be interested in.”
The series is based on the original Australian version of the show, with CBS’ iteration being hosted by “Arrow” star, Manu Bennett. The decision to cast an actor as the host of an unscripted show ended up being an easy one for Lee, considering Bennett “could not be a nicer guy,” especially with “that gravel voice.”
“We wanted somebody well-known that had a public profile and we wanted somebody that kind of fit the vibe — they’re doing something hard on the side of the mountain, so they had to have that right presence about them, which Manu certainly does,” he shared. “But once we started talking to him and realized that he was from New Zealand, that his ancestors were from the South Island and that he had such a connection to the land, that really was a slam dunk for us, because we knew we wanted the mountain and the terrain to be almost a character in the show, and we knew his connection to it would help the cast understand why it’s special. He has a sense of gravity about him; that’s why he has had success in scripted and it comes across in the reality show, too.”
Bennett now joins Jeff Probst, Julie Chen Moonves and Phil Keoghan as the faces of the network’s reality TV shows. And it turns out, one of the longtime hosts in particular is already a fan.
“Jeff Probst has been very nice and talked to Manu publicly,” Lee pointed out. “But also privately, Jeff has talked to him and given him advice, helped him. He’s a fan of the show too now and so he’s championing the show. So we owe a lot to him.”
Plus, Lee is no stranger to reality competitions, himself. The “Summit” executive producer boasts an impressive résumé that includes “The Challenge: USA,” “Fight to Survive” and “Stranded With a Million Dollars,” which means viewers can expect both drama and legitimate survival skills in play.
“One of the difficult things on the show is all of those obstacles have to be accomplishable by everybody, but they can’t be too easy for some people and too hard for others, so finding that balance is really hard. If they fall, they get to go back and start and try it again, so that learning curve was pretty cool to watch because they get that error and they figure it out a little bit,” he teased. “But all of those obstacles are planned and set up long before we know which cast members will be left.”
Find out who wins Season 1 of “The Summit” when it moves to Wednesdays on CBS starting Oct. 9. The series premiere is now streaming on Paramount+.
