While the last twelve months have been a particularly rough one for the majority of unscripted producers, Sharon Levy, who runs Endemol Shine North America isn’t one of them.
In a sea of fewer greenlights, reduced orders and rising costs, the Banijay-owned company had a pretty solid 2024 (and first week of 2025) with big series on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition got a new lick of paint on the Disney-owned network last week; CBS scaled The Summit in the fall, Fox continued to cook up MasterChef and build Lego Masters and NBC took classic game show Deal or No Deal to a desert island.
“I don’t want to sound braggy,” CEO Levy told Deadline. “I have an amazing team and what we were able to accomplish in 2024 was massive. We had a great year and I attribute that to first class creative. Now, are people handing out orders like it’s a fire sale at Neiman’s? No. But I still believe that if you have something that someone else feels is exceptional, they’re going to take a swing. The pressure is on us as producers to be pitching those types of ideas with the right creative, first and foremost, then it’s got to be about the right price and it’s got to be the right package.”
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It is also now looking to move into the talent competition space with Star Academy (more below).
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, who created the global lifestyle brand The Home Edit, are the hosts of the new version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which launched on January 2.
The pair were working with Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, which introduced them to ABC and the network suggested they team up with Endemol Shine North America (ESNA) to bring back the show that had previously run for nine seasons on ABC until 2012 and one season on HGTV.
Levy said that Shearer and Teplin bring “such a fresh feel to that show”. “They have a very different expertise than carpentry, and the fact that they can look at someone’s life and say it’s not just about the house that’s holding you back from moving on, it’s about what you’re hanging on to,” she added.
The first episode features Texas resident Gail Warren and her family, who lost her husband, Rev. Fred Warren Jr. to Covid in 2021. After his death, they lived with the kids’ grandmother in a house that was too small for them, before getting a new home in Austin.
“For the first time ever, what we do on the show in the Edit Zone is we take that entire content of your home and we lay it out room-by-room in a warehouse, and the team goes through it with the family. It’s unbelievably emotional when you see everything laid out. [Gail] brought back the bag that the hospital gave her of her husband’s things from the day he went in and tragically did not come back, and she’s been holding on to this bag. The storytelling is just on another level, and I think that is because of who Joanna and Clea are and what they do for a real living,” Levy added.
She also praised Taylor Morrison, which for the first was the show’s only home builder, as “beyond our partners”. “To see these gruff guys building, just break down in tears, and see how good they feel about themselves doing something good. Corporations are a lot of times made out to be the villains in most movies, so I think seeing a giant company like Taylor Morrison, seeing Clea And Joanna do their thing, seeing the designers, and the thoughtfulness, it just feels really different,” she added.
Elsewhere, NBC quickly renewed Deal or No Deal Island, a new take on the long-running game show, for a second season, which premieres tonight, January 7.
The series is hosted by Joe Manganiella and the second season features the likes of Survivor‘s Parvati Shallow, Survivor Australia’s David Genat, and Big Brother’s Dr. Will Kirby.
Deal or No Deal Island hides suitcases with more than $200M in prize money split between them. In each episode, players compete in challenges to secure the briefcases that will be used in that night’s game of Deal or No Deal. The player who snags the highest-value case gains immunity and gets to choose a fellow player to enter The Temple. The winnings from each game are added to a group pot that will grow throughout the season. The last player standing will face the Banker to potentially win the biggest prize in Deal or No Deal history.
Deal or No Deal is one of parent company Banijay’s biggest global titles; others on a similar scale include Wipeout, which Levy is still keen to bring back after running for two seasons on TBS, and Fear Factor, which was previously hosted by the dean of American political podcasting Joe Rogan.
“Not every show should be or warrants a reboot or reimagining. It has to be the right one and for the right reason, and it has to move the culture,” Levy said.
The former Spike TV exec also wants more bets on original ideas and formats that American audiences might not have heard of.
Last year, it found success with The Summit on CBS. The show, which is hosted by Manu Bennett, who starred in Spartacus, Arrow and The Hobbit trilogy, follows sixteen strangers, who embark on a journey through the New Zealand Alps in an attempt to reach the peak of a mountain. It launched in September and ran through the end of the year.
The company is now waiting to hear back on a second season renewal. “It ended its run really well. All of the episodes are now on Paramount+ and how these shows do on streaming is a huge factor. CBS has been nothing but phenomenal to us, they love the show and are really supportive so fingers crossed,” she added.
Star Academy
But ESNA’s big new project that it hopes to sell this year is Star Academy, based on a long-running French format that airs on TF1.
Star Academy goes behind the scenes of the recording industry as a group of aspiring young artists receive training by an expert composer, stylist, media trainer, director and celebrity who all support the students on their quest for stardom. At the end of the week, the young contestants show off what they’ve learned in a live performance. A panel of judges and viewer voting determines who stays and who goes until one remains. The eventual winner is awarded a record deal and a passport to fame and stardom.
“There is an appetite for music and the way we’re reimagining it is much more of an all access paid to how people discover music now. It’s not the three judges,” said Levy. “The beauty of Star Academy is you live with these people throughout the competition. While you have the big stage show, of course, you’re also having a myriad of cutthroat, soapy competitions behind the scenes. It’s as much a music competition as it is a social experiment. It just feels young.”
ESNA is just starting to pitch the project, which sounds exactly like the type of format that Netflix’s relatively new reality boss Jeff Gaspin is looking for. After the success of drama series Ripley, which scored a trio of Golden Globe nominations, Levy is now making it one of her priorities to sell an unscripted show to the streamer.
“They are definitely our biggest target for ’25. They did a phenomenal job with Ripley, promoting it and caring for it,” she said.
The streamer is also looking at live, which is an area of interest for Levy.
“I think back to all the great stunts that Discovery used to do in the day or the broadcast networks did, watching someone achieve something incredible so it feels [like] sports, it’s a moment in history. I think dance is something that you can look at doing live as well. We have something that we’re really excited about in the dance world that we’re talking about a big live event,” she added.
The post After Reimagining ‘Deal Or No Deal’ & ‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’, Endemol Shine Enrolls In ‘Star Academy’ appeared first on Deadline.
