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2 months ago
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EXCLUSIVE: Love Island has just crowned the winners of season six, its most buzzy season since it launched in the U.S. in 2019.
The show has been buoyed by a new host in Ariana Madix, one of the stars of Vanderpump Rules, new popularity on social media, particularly TikTok and a well-liked cast.
After nearly airing on MTV and then being somewhat on the brink of cancellation at CBS before its eventual move to Peacock, which has already renewed the show for season seven as part of a two-season order, Love Island is a rare entertainment format to break through years after its launch.
Peacock already launched a spinoff, Love Island Games and David George, who runs ITV America, the production group behind both shows, is keen to create an even bigger Love Island universe.
But it’s not the only tentpole show that the American arm of the British broadcaster and studio would like to supersize as it considers “building out” Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen as well.
George told Deadline, “There are conversations around how we create the Love Island universe. That’s a very positive thing. Once you create a brand that has actual value, the sky’s the limit. The most important thing is to create brands that have value, it’s just a tremendous thing to be able to do and to be able to take advantage of.”
There’s always the possibility of more editions of the show such as a winter version. Love Island in the UK aired five seasons shot in Mallorca, Spain before launching a winter season, shot in Cape Town for its sixth season, revisiting South Africa last year for its ninth season.
The U.S. show returned to Fiji for its fifth and sixth season after starting in the Oceania island in season one, before being forced to move to Las Vegas, Hawaii and Santa Barbara for various reasons including the Covid pandemic. While Fiji has monsoon season between November and April, it’s still a year-round destination with warm temperatures.
Earlier this year, ITV in the UK also launched Love Island: All Stars featuring a group of previous islanders. While it might be a bit early to recreate this in the U.S. as American islanders haven’t quite broken out in the same way as their British counterparts, it’s certainly a possibility down the line.
But why did Love Island break out five years after its launch?
George believes there are a number of reasons for its new “cultural relevancy”. He says the fact that it is streaming on Peacock, rather than on linear, attracts a younger audience and allows it to be a “cornerstone” of the service.
The fact that they stayed in Fiji helped. “That allows us to focus more on the actual creative as opposed to logistics. I don’t think people understand how big the show is. It’s almost like moving a city, you have 500 people working on the show so going back into the same production model, knowing who a lot of the staff were going to be and how it was going work in Fiji allowed us to focus more on the creative.”
He called this year’s cast “very strong”. “The producers have been able to focus on storylines that are very engaging. If you look at past seasons, sometimes there are storylines you have to keep following because you have to keep following them, but [this] cast is so dynamic and the storylines are so solid, I think it’s brought a quality level of consistency across all of the hours that you haven’t seen before and I think that keeps the audience very engaged.”
George also praised the introduction of Madix, who has incredible public support after she was famously cheated on during Vanderpump Rules and replaced Modern Family star Sarah Hyland. “Ariana speaks more to the demographic of Peacock and I think she brings something new and unique to the table,” he added. “She has some heat behind her and she’s very engaged as a host as well.”
Timing wise, previous seasons launched towards the end of July and season six premiered near the start of June in order to avoid the Olympics. George was worried that this would mean it would clash with the British series, which airs on Hulu, but the UK version hasn’t quite been as buzzy this year. “The timing of its launch actually helped because it was right at the beginning of the summer,” he said.
“We always wanted Love Island to have its moment. It took us a while to find it, but it is having its moment right now in the U.S.,” he added.
On a strategic level, the company believes the success of this season proves that high-volume shows, ones that air regularly over multiple nights a week, can work on a streaming platform.
“The real challenge that a lot of the independent production companies are now faced with is that with cable volume basically in decline, where does that volume come from? You really need it to come from the streamers. You really need the streamers to start, frankly, behaving a bit more like linear networks, to fill the hours and to create programs that actually pull people in night-after-night,” George said.
George is looking to replicate this volume model with other titles including a take on British reality series I’m A Celebrity, still one of the most popular shows in the UK that strips across the week.
ITV America has been regularly pitching the show in the U.S. including a 2021 attempt with Blumhouse called Celebrity Castle and another attempt last year. The show previously aired on ABC for a single season in 2003 and NBC in 2009.
“I’m A Celeb is clearly one of those shows that we could potentially create the volume and appointment style viewing. But the show has been tried a couple of times here. You have to have the right strategic partner but you can do that because it’s going to have those snackable moments that are going to work on TikTok. I think it’s all a casting thing,” he added.
HELL’S KITCHEN
ITV Entertainment, the ITV America label that produces Love Island, also produces Hell’s Kitchen, the Gordon Ramsay-fronted cooking show for Fox that is turning 20 years old next year.
Produced in association with A. Smith & Co. Productions, Deadline revealed that the show was renewed for a two-season order in March, taking it through to its 24th season.
It was able to do this in part because of a deal with the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut, where one of Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen restaurants opened last year.
This runs counter to the fact that many shows, particularly broadcast network shows, are now being shot in the UK, Ireland, across Europe and in Australia.
“Part of the bigger problem is that a lot of the big broadcast shows are being exported to be produced in other countries. Not that we haven’t done that too out of necessity, but we found a way to keep Hell’s Kitchen inside the U.S. by going to a tax credit friendly place and doing a great partnership deal with Foxwoods to take advantage of those tax credits. As a group, we have to try to problem solve how to keep our productions inside the U.S. a bit more. If you go to LA right now there are tons of amazing showrunners that are available to work because a lot of these shows have been pushed to more cost-efficient locations,” he added.
George admitted that with a show going in to its 23rd and 24th season, his team needs to go back to the drawing board to keep it “fresh” including looking at potential spinoffs. “Recently, we were with Gordon and we’ve been talking about what we can do around Hell’s Kitchen. Are there some unique things that we could do with that franchise to try and build it out a bit more? We’re having those conversations,” he added.
He pointed to NBC’s Deal or No Island, a new take on an old format that has been renewed for a second season. “It’s familiar IP but with a new flavor. That is a pretty good avenue to be looking at because all of these buyers would prefer to buy a known piece of IP than to try something new because they can actually sell advertising against it,” he said.
Elsewhere, ITV America, which has long focused on adapting hits from its British counterpart, is now looking to step up its own internal development.
The company is also behind Worst Roommate Ever, the Netflix docuseries that was recently renewed for a second season, and has developed entertainment formats such as My Mom, Your Dad, which came from The Office’s Greg Daniels and his daughter Hayley, for Max, which was recently picked up in Canada and Poland.
“We’re generating more formats internally out of the U.S. than we ever have. A lot of the production companies were cable-based so a lot of the development that they were focused on was character-based [shows] so the U.S. has never really doubled or tripled down on the format because they don’t own it. I think you’re going to see it become more of a priority over the course of the next few years because if the prices are coming down on shows, it’s going to be more important to try and retain rights,” he said.
George said ITV America has sold its first original show to its parent broadcaster ITV and its first original in Australia as well. “We should be pitching anywhere that you could potentially sell an idea and retain rights, you’ve never heard U.S. people talk about that before. It doesn’t mean buyers aren’t going to listen to the foreign stuff but we have to be at the table to create those types of ideas,” he added.
