'Survivor' returns for a new season next week.
Timothy Kuratek / CBS via Getty ImagesThe 41st season of"Survivor" was always going to be different. But after COVID and new attention on the show during the pandemic, it's been reimagined.
What Probst describes is a stripped-down game — one that he says goes"back to the very basic idea of a group of strangers, forced to rely on each other to survive while voting each other out." The game is the one the contestants create, without the top-down divisions by social class, generation, gameplay experience and even race: This is to be"Survivor 41," with no subtitle and no stated theme.
Little wonder that, just as it's reliably drawn a core audience on Wednesday nights on CBS,"Survivor" has been a top performer on Paramount Plus."The show's a top-three fixture, even when we didn't have original episodes over the past year," says network president Kelly Kahl, who was at CBS when the series launched in 2000."People were either rewatching or discovering this show.
Probst invokes Joseph Campbell, the late professor of mythology and a key influence on"Star Wars," when discussing how the show has evolved."What words would he use?" Probst wonders, noting that Campbell's work has, especially recently, helped him to uncover"five stages" of"Survivor.""It makes it really clear what kind of an advantage or twist would go in stage one, and what kind would go in stage two," Probst says.
Which might make alteration seem risky. But Probst, who became an exec producer in 2010 and sole showrunner the following year, is unconcerned."The easiest thing in the world for Jeff Probst would be to helicopter in, cash a check and go home at the end of each cycle," says Kahl."But to his credit, he's so invested in the show; for him, if he was going to be involved in the show, he wants to keep it relevant.
Having stripped away the excesses that had built up around"Survivor" on the way to season 40, the host and producer had an early idea for the reinvention of season 41. Capitalism — already a barely subtextual theme of the series — would become the main story."Money would enter the society," Probst says."We wanted to look at how that would change things when you had to earn everything, and then you could buy what you needed.
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