EXCLUSIVE: Netflix is no stranger to the bake-off, a process designed to choose a production company to make a certain show, in the unscripted universe.
The streamer has held such auditions for series such as Meghan Markle’s With Love, Meghan, which was won by Sony’s IPC, and its upcoming Willy Wonka series The Golden Ticket, which will be produced by The Floor producer Eureka Productions.
However, its latest process to pick a company to make a reality series based on iconic board game Monopoly, has taken things to a new level.
Deadline understands that there are around 40 companies vying to score the right to make Monopoly, which Netflix picked up from Hasbro Entertainment earlier this year, as revealed by Deadline.
Seeing as there are around the same number of companies keen to battle it out to make the show as there are squares on a Monopoly board, the process has been the talk of the unscripted business over the last week.
Jeff Gaspin, who heads up unscripted at Netflix, told Deadline that he was convinced to buy the project without a pitch in part due to the success of Monopoly Go!, the mobile board game from Scopely that came out in 2023. That game is thought to have had more than 150M downloads and generated at least $5B in revenue.
“There’s a gameplay in Monopoly Go! that I think really will resonate with gameplay in an unscripted series,” he said. “The idea itself is still up for grabs. How do we want to approach it? Is it a giant game board? Is it in the real world? We don’t have the answer and we had so many agents and so many production companies reaching out and asking us if they can participate, and asking if we’ll consider putting them in the bake-off that we didn’t want to be restrictive. So, we said, ‘Why don’t we do a first round that’s pretty broad.”
Companies have had to be either invited to join the process or pre-approved by Netflix executives. It’s believed that these companies then signed a two-page contract, which highlights that the successful company won’t secure any back-end rights to the property, before being asked to submit a logline. It’s thought that this larger group will then be whittled down to around 15 companies, which will then be invited into a 15-minute pitch meeting, where a winner will either be declared or a handful of companies will be chosen to develop their ideas further.
Netflix is hoping that the end product will be a “large-scale” series similar to its hits such as Love Is Blind and Squid Game: The Challenge.
One source said that the unprecedented scale of the bake-off was “ridiculous”, while another called it a “little out of control”. “It seems completely crazy and also seems completely disrespectful of people’s time and resources,” added a producer.
But Gaspin disputed this notion, saying that the process is designed so companies don’t waste a lot of time developing and pitching a series that doesn’t make it.
“We’ll see what comes back. My guess is this is going to be an iterative process. It’s going to take us a little while, but that’s okay. We did it with The Golden Ticket and I’m really excited about the creative on The Golden Ticket. We did that in a bake-off style process and I think it’s good for the community that producers and production companies have a chance to show what they have.”
He added that it may also open doors for companies that haven’t scored a big unscripted series for Netflix. “Even if they don’t get picked on this project, we might see something in their pitch that we really like, so we’ll keep them in mind the next time something comes along. I think it’s healthy for the community to give a lot of people an opportunity,” he added.
