The Sun reporting that The Cube will have a seven-figure top prize (i.e. £1m).
To be honest this almost feels like too much money and at the very least is going to require some format reworking.
It’s not as simple as “add more games to the ladder” – if people were scared enough to risk £20/50k before, that isn’t going to change (and if the format hasn’t changed at all you won’t be getting to the upper reaches anyway), and you risk the ultimate problem in money ladder gameshows: Boringly Trending Towards The Mean. And you can’t just keep it at seven games and start at £10,000 (or make the early games too easy), that feels like money too easily earnt. More lives? I think there’s a good aesthetic to starting with nine they won’t want to mess with.
One solution suggested on Twitter was jump from £100,000 to £1m. THAT would lead to some intriguing decisions if the contestant gets that far.
Another suggestion is they go The Whole 19 Yards route, where failure meant dropping a level rather than dropping to zero.
I wonder if they might go down the route of recent Millionaire and install a movable safety net? Let’s not forget when The Cube was piloted all those years ago it had a “bank” feature, so it’s not out of the question.
Seven games / nine lives confirmed, apparently.
https://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/cube-back-one-million-pound-jackpot
The question nobody’s asking: why’s the top prize of the celeb episode only £250k?
Perhaps this is a clue that the million quid will relate in some way to the team play aspect, if the celebrity specials are just one celebrity at a time
The 5 episode commission makes me wonder if the main series will be stripped across a week a la Beat The Chasers and be billed as a £1m event. The £1m could indeed be related to being pairs.
The celebrity special could then air separately (Christmas perhaps). Does seem odd for it to not be the same though.
Also curious if this is five or six episodes – the way the ITV press release is written, it sounds like the “special series” could be five *and* a celebrity special on top?
The public casting call mentioned five days of filming – which would also play into the 5+1 thinking.
You can’t apply for The Cube if you’re “training/trained as a professional competitive athlete and/or a sports personality (including on social media) and/or someone associated with a brand in any sporting activity.”
Pitching the prize levels right is so important, and often why so many shows fail in the US where failure means tens of thousands of dollars when the have a million dollar money tree.
I don’t really think they needed a £1m jackpot as that wasn’t particularly the appeal – £250k is more than sufficient for a show of this nature. If it is £1m per game I guess £5k, £10k, £20k, £50k, £100k, £250k and £1m is a decent progression.
I do wonder though with the celeb version being £250k whether the £1m will for an additional element – perhaps another game for the best performing pair or some part of bonus game running throughout the week – and once it’s won, it’s won. Really though as boring as it can be everyone bailing at £10k or £20k I’d have thought ITV would rather limit their likely prize payout to £30k an hour.