Alright, this isn’t a full list, but they start filming next week and newspapers are starting to carry some preliminary details about new things at the Fort this year. (Read about them at Fortboyard.net and/or Fan-fortboyard.fr).
Here’s a round up, it will not be exhaustive and more detailed things will likely come out after the French teams have finished filming, we’re probably about six weeks away from the premiere on France 2:
- 10 Episodes, at a whopping two hours and ten minutes each. I preferred it closer to 90 minutes myself.
- They have to gain entry to the fort again. The team must find two medallions to unlock the fort’s front door and they could be in one of three places – the well (creepy crawlies), up the top of a waterslide, at the end of a wind-tunnel. Once found they can run up to the centre circle on the first level and put their hands on a plinth which “unlocks the cells”.
- Five new cells have been announced, this may not be exhaustive. Basketball-in-a-wind-tunnel game The Boyard Stadium, the Hammocks which they’ve been playing as a duel event internationally for a few years, The Metal Spider, The Garage and The Human Wheel (pick things up with your teeth whilst strapped to a spinning wheel partly submerged in water).
- Judge Blanche’s twin sister has taken residence. And she’s played by the same person (the model and actress and former contestant Delphine Wespiser) and dresses in red. She will take on the team in a new intermediate section called The Cage where up to two keys are on offer, and helping her are guest contestants who have taken on the fort previously, now in Pere Fouras’ employ. It looks like most other characters – Chef Willy Rovelli, Vincent C the magician, Mister and Lady Boo also return.
- Prisoners will need to escape the underground again but this time they’re against the clock, and if they take too long it will start to eat into the team’s treasure room time.
- It’s been suggested that the team will no longer have to gamble time in the council.
More news as and when (there are some question marks as to how it all fits together), they’ve dressed up the old spiders and scorpions chamber as a creepy dolls house (which looks brilliant), so look out for that as well.
I hope it works well as a strong Boyard is good for television in general, but the last time the show felt like it threw everything but the kitchen sink at it it was 2002 and almost got axed, and this feels eerily similar. WE SHALL SEE.
> strong Boyard
I’ve lost count how many times you’ve done this, but every time I still get a giggle out of it 😛
Accidental joke really.
Ooh, from the looks of it, Rouge is leading a sort of ‘dream team’ of celebs from the 2011-2014 era of teams in the Cage.
Rouge sounds like the kind of timewaster I’m not a huge fan of. The Human Wheel kinda sounds like an immunity challenge they had on Survivor once…
Liking the bit about the prison. Always liked those segments, but didn’t like the fact there was no real penalty or anything.
… Oh geez, the spider room looks creepy…
The impression is Rouge is the first bit of the intermediate section, before Blanche and escaping the prison.
I know exactly which Survivor challenge you mean!
Considering the near-miss they had in 2014, it seems like there might be cases this year where the team gets 7 keys without needing to visit Blanche. Two problems here: 1) how have they planned for this, and 2) I REALLY hope they haven’t attempted to solve problem #1 by putting ridiculous time limits on everything again.
Sad to see the council being removed but with how stale and unbalanced it’d gotten lately I can see why.
Where did you read that? The suggestion was they don’t lose time if they lose the game. It’s just rumour right niw though.
Ah OK, I was making an assumption based on them not gambling time. That would actually work better with the way they did it last year actually. Easy to get a few seconds but hard to get the higher amounts.