Fox, Endemol Shine Team for ‘Fear Factor’ Scripted Microdrama

The market for vertical media content is expanding at a fast clip and it’s attracting more and more high-profile properties, including the enduring gross-out reality show “Fear Factor.”

Fox and “Fear Factor” owner Endemol Shine North America are teaming to adapt the show for vertical media consumption as a scripted series, which adds a dollop of horror-genre heat to the vertical format. The series will consist of 30 episodes running three minutes apiece. This version of “Fear Factor” will be distributed via Holywater Tech’s popular My Drama microdrama app. The deal comes as part of the larger partnership that Fox Corp. set with Holywater last fall.

The premise of the untitled microdrama will revolve around a week of pre-production on a horror movie set. Ian Nsenga and Yuliia Vyshnevska are set to produce. Thom Woodley and Andrew Beck are set as writers, with Gabriel Caste on board to direct.

“Fear Factor” was a hit for NBC in the 2000s. Fox revived the series as “Fear Factor: House of Fear” with host Johnny Knoxville last year. The microdrama edition is a sign of how traditional outlets like Fox and studios such as Endemol Shine are mining their archives for all manner of new iterations. The vertical media boom promises to add a layer of complexity to reaching the mass audiences that the largest media outlets need to be able to support high-end original content.

“ ‘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,” said Hannah Pillemer, head of scripted for Fox Entertainment Studios. [Fox Entertainment president] 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. Our friends at Endemol Shine came to us with an inspired way to do exactly that, turning everything audiences love about Fear Factor into the foundation for a completely original horror story.”

The fandom for “Fear Factor” has ebbed and flowed over the past decade but it remains a highly visible property for Banijay’s Endemol Shine unit, with some 32 adaptations worldwide.

“We’re grateful to see our vision of turning My Drama into a trusted platform for studios, creators and IP like ‘Fear Factor’ come to life,” said Anatolii Kasianov and Bogdan Nesvit, co-Founders and co-CEOs of Holywater Tech. “This is another step toward expanding the audience and helping vertical TV evolve into mainstream entertainment.”

Michael Heyerman, exec VP of unscripted series for Endemol Shine North America, said “Fear Factor” lends itself to short bursts.

“Vertical storytelling is creating a new language for entertainment, one built on immediacy, intimacy and serialized discovery and ‘Fear Factor’ already speaks it fluently,” Heyerman said. “Our partners at Fox gave the franchise a powerful new life with ‘House of Fear,’ and we’re proud to build on that momentum. Alongside Holywater, together we’re creating a new generation of horror that doesn’t just fit the mobile screen but uses it as part of the experience.”

The series will premiere on My Drama but Fox will handle worldwide distribution and windowing strategies. Fox has been aggressive in developing vertical media properties that can be packaged and sold to linear and streaming platforms around the world, as the company discussed at length earlier this month at the Mipcom content marketplace in Cannes.