The Gurin Company Brings UNO to Television

The Gurin Company, the same production company who brought you The Weakest Link and The Singing Bee, has partnered with Mattel to develop a television version of the classic, popular card game UNO. The game show will be launched worldwide at MipTV in April and will be pitched as a daily half-hour format with a $100,000 top prize and as a primetime format with a $1 million top prize. According to Phil Gurin, the show “builds on the traditional card game and combines the potential for big-money with a fast-paced elimination competition, cool prizes, fun Q&A, and, of course, strategy and comedy.”

We have seen board game-to-game show crossovers which have worked, such as Scrabble and Pictionary (Thicke version), and some that have not been so successful, such as Yahtzee and Boggle. This UNO game show could be a “hit or miss” depending on how it’s executed. According to Gurin’s response concerning the UNO: The Game Show, the television version of the card game will implement trivia within the format; so, this seems promising. I believe this show would serve best as a syndicated, daily half-hour format, simply because of the fact that million-dollar primetime game shows are played out and there are a lack of U.S. half-hour game shows today besides Wheel and Jeopardy!  If the show were to be picked up by a network, I can’t help but wonder who would snatch up this opportunity. What do you think? Do you think UNO would work as a game show?

Source: C21 Media