‘Fear Factor’ Goes Vertical With Scripted Microdrama

Fox‘s Fear Factor: House of Fear is going in a couple of new directions: The reality series will be the basis for a scripted microdrama.

Fox Entertainment Studios and Endemol Shine North America are teaming up for a vertical video show inspired by the current iteration of Fear Factor, which is going into its second season on the network (Endemol Shine North America, a Banijay company, produces the unscripted series). The microseries will stream on the My Drama platform owned by Holywater Tech, in which Fox has an equity stake.

According to Fox, the currently untitled microdrama will mark the first unscripted-to-scripted franchise extension in television. It’s also the first horror series for My Drama (though there are a number of vampire and werewolf romances on the platform).

“Fear Factor has always tapped into something primal: what scares us, how far we’ll go and what happens when we’re forced to confront our fears,” said Hannah Pillemer, head of scripted at Fox Entertainment Studios. “The tremendous response [to Fear Factor: House of Fear] has opened the door to take Fear Factor somewhere it has never gone before: becoming the first unscripted television franchise to make the leap into original scripted storytelling. Our friends at Endemol Shine came to us with an inspired way to do exactly that, turning everything audiences love about Fear Factor into the foundation for a completely original horror story.”

Added Michael Heyerman, executive vp unscripted series at Endemol Shine North America, “Vertical storytelling is creating a new language for entertainment, one built on immediacy, intimacy, and serialized discovery, and Fear Factor already speaks it fluently. Our partners at Fox gave the franchise a powerful new life with House of Fear, and we’re proud to build on that momentum. Alongside Holywater, together we’re creating a new generation of horror that doesn’t just fit the mobile screen but uses it as part of the experience.”

The Fear Factor microseries will have 30 three-minute episodes. It “takes place during prep week on a remote horror television set,” the logline reads, “where a practical-effects artist and her crew unleash a haunted fortune-telling machine that forces them into personalized death trials, leaving the survivors to uncover its tragic origins before it claims everyone they love.”

Holywater bills itself as an “AI-first company,” but the Fear Factor series is a physical production. Ian Nsenga and Yuliia Vyshnevska are producing, with Gabriel Caste directing and Thom Woodley and Andrew Beck writing.