Jeff Probst is teasing what’s to come in Survivor season 51!
The 64-year-old host and executive producer will return this week for the kickoff of the Open Era of the hit, long-running CBS series, and has revealed something that’s coming back from season 50, but with a twist.
“One of the things of the Open Era is you can take any idea you’ve ever done and put it back into the show. You can also take an idea you’ve done, put it back into the show with a twist,” Jeff shared with The Hollywood Reporter. “So we took an idea from 50, this idea of a million dollar coin flip. We said, ‘What if we put that in the show every season? And every season, one player gets to flip a coin, and if you call it correctly, we’ll add a million dollars to the pot for that season.’”
“Then we put a twist on it. Same rules as 50 with one difference,” he continued. “If you call it incorrectly, you as a coin flipper are out, that million dollars rolls into the next season of Survivor. So in Survivor 51, at some point, a player’s going to flip a coin for a million dollars. If they land it, the prize pool will be $2 million for 51. If they don’t land it, that million dollars will go into Survivor 52 and somebody will flip a $2 million coin making the prize money $3 million. And if that doesn’t land, it’ll go into 53. It will go until it pays off and then it’ll start again.”
“I think it’s the most innovative twist in prize money in the history of unscripted television, because that million dollars is a living, breathing thing. And the question is, where is it going to land and how many of them will there be when it does land?”
“Take all things, old, new, combine them, whatever you want to do. But that twist is really fun,” he said. “And imagine where it could go. It could pay off every season and suddenly it’s $2 million every season. It could not pay off for three or four seasons and suddenly somebody’s flipping a coin for three or $4 million.”
Jeff also teased more about what fans can expect in the Open Era.
“There are some other things that we haven’t done in a while. I’d like to bring Folklore back where I tell a story and then with your cognitive decline happening, you have to remember facts from the story. We used to like to shoot those at night. That requires a bit of production help. We need a lot of fire. It’s a big setup,” Jeff told THR.
“There are things like that that are absolutely on the table as are things like themed seasons. If in casting we realize we’ve got David vs Goliath II happening. Great, we’ll do it. As are uneven men and women. We have 11 women, 10 men because we had 21 great people and we didn’t go, let’s make it even. Let’s not fall into any conventional traps. Don’t base tribes based on gender. We might do a season where we have a lot more women on one tribe because we think they’re even the way they’re designed.”
He continued, “So if you really just keep opening and opening and opening your mind to the idea that when we say anything is possible, we mean anything is possible.”
When does Survivor season 51 premiere?
Season 51 kicks off with a special two-hour episode on Wednesday, September 23 (8:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on CBS, and streaming on Paramount+ live and on demand for Paramount+ Premium plan subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs.
The show then shifts to 90-minute weekly episodes beginning Wednesday, September 30 at 8:00 p.m.
Meet the 21 castaways here!
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