Anna Daniels
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to claim victims across the world, COVID-19 is affecting not just film productions, release dates, festivals, and in-studio television audiences, but reality TV shows as well. Even Survivor, one of the genre’s most popular entries, is not immune. A new report says production on the next two seasons has been delayed, with host and executive producer Jeff Probst writing a letter to the crew to inform them about the delays. Read the letter below.
Survivor typically airs two seasons per year. Entertainment Weekly brings word that season 41 of Survivor, which was scheduled to begin filming on March 24 in the Mamanuca Islands in Fiji, has been pushed back to at least May. Not only that, but season 42, which was originally supposed to get underway on May 24, has been pushed back as well.
But there’s a potential silver lining for hardcore Survivor fans who are still watching the show twenty years in: “if there are no further delays — and that is a big if — then air dates for the two seasons (with season 41 premiering in September and season 42 airing in February 2021) would not be impacted.” I’m not sure how likely that is, given that the virus continues to be rapidly spreading, but I guess it can’t hurt to hold out a little hope.
Here’s the full letter from Jeff Probst explaining why things are coming to a temporary halt:
Hey Survivor crew,
Due to the growing short-term uncertainty surrounding the global spread of COVID-19 and the corresponding desire for the continued well-being of our amazing crew, we have decided to push back our start date for Survivor season 41.
Though Fiji has no reported cases and is beautifully remote, our crew numbers over 400 and are flying in from over 20 different countries, creating a need for more time to fully analyze and create our new production safety plan.
This situation is unprecedented and we are learning more information every day. It is out of concern for the well-being of all of you that we have taken this step.
Our intention is to begin production after the S40 live show. Therefore, subject to new information, our new planned start date for production would be on or about May 19th, 2020. Our intention is to still to shoot both seasons 41 and 42.
We know many of you will have questions and we will start a communication chain to keep everybody up to date.
We are the most experienced international television team in the world and for 20 years we have calmly and successfully managed a variety of production issues. We will navigate this one the same way.
Thank you for understanding our need for this extra time to create our plan.
Jeff
Cool Posts From Around the Web: Written by: Slash
