Half-Hour Series Hosted by E! Entertainment and At The Movies' Ben
Lyons
*(Artwork available upon request)
NEW YORK, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Nickelodeon brings sports, fun and
healthy competition to kids and families across the country this fall with
the premiere of its new series My Family's Got GUTS on Monday, Sept. 15 at
8:00 p.m. (ET/PT.) The half-hour extreme sports series that asks 'Do You
Have It?' is hosted by Ben Lyons (new co-host of At The Movies and E!
Network's resident film critic) and co-hosted by popular Australian TV
personality Asha Kuerten. My Family's Got GUTS will air every weeknight at
8:00 p.m. (ET/PT) from Monday, Sept. 15 through Friday, Sept. 26. The
hour-long finale will premiere on Nick's Annual Worldwide Day of Play on
Saturday, Sept. 27, at 8:00 p.m. (ET/PT).
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080909/NY32484 )
The new prime-time series is based on GUTS, Nickelodeon's
groundbreaking original hit game show from the '90s. Shot at Universal
Studios in Orlando, Fla., the new series is comprised of two 11-episode
tournaments, each of which includes an hour-long finale and a half-hour
special. My Family's Got GUTS is created and executive produced by
Worldwide Biggies, the digital entertainment studio headed by renowned
children's and family entertainment hit-maker Albie Hecht, who was part of
the creative team behind the original hit GUTS show.
The premiere episode features two four-member families, the 'Sherry
Storm' of Orlando, Fla. and the 'Chastain Charge' of Sharpsburg, Ga., who
will battle it out for ultimate GUTS supremacy and a piece of the coveted
"Aggro Crag," a mountain-climbing term for an "aggressive mountain." The
winner will move on to compete against another family in the semi-finals in
hopes of winning the grand prize and the largest piece of the Aggro Crag.
Each family will face-off in The Extreme Arena and compete in two of 10
extreme sports challenges. At the end of the episode, they advance to
compete in the challenge of all challenges -- the Aggro Crag! The family
who gets to the summit of the Aggro Crag wins and moves on to the next
round of the tournament.
The 10 challenges include:
-- Sky Slam -- A two-on-two elastic sports basketball game where
bungee-jumping players ?ght for continuous super-high jump-balls, then
pass to teammates who slam dunk in a 13 ft. high basket.
-- Alley Hoop -- A three-team basketball challenge where players throw
major alley-oop passes to bungee-jumping teammates, who must catch the
pass and slam dunk in the sky-high basket. While they try to catch and
dunk, the other team, doing the same, can suddenly switch to defense,
and try to stop them.
-- Flying Football -- A two-on-two elastic sports football game where high
flying bungee jumping teams face each other and play QB and receiver.
One teammate passes and the other catches. Receivers can also act as
defenders and turn around and intercept the passes and have the
opportunity to also break up the play.
-- Volley Brawl -- A four-on-four rapid fire elastic sports volleyball
match where both teams continuously set and bungee-spike balls over the
super-high net into a target zone. All the while, the other team can
also block the spikes up high and defend the zones down low.
-- Supertoe PK -- A four-on-four elastic sports soccer duel where players
act as strikers and goalies, continuously kick high-flying balls at each
other and defend at the same time. Shooters can stop to defend at any
time, but may miss their own chance to shoot and score.
-- Air Slalom -- An aerial sports board-riding slalom run, except no snow
and no mountain -- just big air. Teams compete way up high, in sky
harnesses, cloud-surfing a team-effort slalom course. Four players
team-up to successfully navigate the course and pass the most gates.
-- Mile High Triple Jump -- A single player from each team must nail a
super-huge high jump, a pair of major high hurdles, then re-group for a
final monster vertical leap.
-- GUTS Grand Prix -- Three teams face-off in a four-on-four multi-bike out
door road race. Teams take to the city streets on unique custom
vehicles powered only by pedal-to-the-metal GUTS. This event means team
endurance and a head-to-head fight to the finish line.
-- Free Run City -- An urban landscape parkour challenge where teams
compete relay-style. All four players run/climb over a combination of
urban obstacles: back alleys, rooftops, water towers, sky bridges and
construction sites. Making cat leaps, kong vaults, wall spins and more.
Players in rigged harnesses can free-run over every obstacle they face.
-- Formula GUTS -- A formula-one style foot-powered track race where teams
face chicanes and hairpins in a custom velomobile, a multi-lap race for
the best time.
-- The Aggro Crag -- The pinnacle of My Family's Got GUTS!, the Aggro
Crag is the ultimate challenge. The first to climb to the top means one
thing: victory! In the preliminary trials, two players from each team
face the mountain's bitter outer layer, teaming up to tackle the
brutal base and frozen face. Then, in the Semi-Finals and Championship
Round, all four players are needed to complete the grueling journey to
the top, starting with the Mesas of Doom, leaping full-bore into the
Aggro Crag's undiscovered core and finally racing past the Glacial
Gorge and up the Vertical Freeze in a race to the very top, the Crystal
Peak.
On Saturday, Sept. 27, in an unprecedented move, Nickelodeon Kids and
Family Group will go off the air for an afternoon (12 to 3 p.m. ET/PT)
across all its TV properties and related web platforms for its signature
Worldwide Day of Play. This year marks the fifth annual event for
Nickelodeon and its sister networks and the first time ever that all
Nickelodeon television networks and their related websites -- including:
Nickelodeon, The N, Noggin, Nicktoons Network, Nick.com, Noggin.com,
Nicktoonsnetwork.com, and The-N.com -- will go dark to inspire kids to
participate in the fight against childhood obesity.
Ben Lyons is one of the most sought-after television personalities in
Hollywood. At the ripe age of 26, Ben is the resident film critic and
entertainment correspondent on The E! Network and can next be seen as one
of the new hosts of televisions most popular and respected movie review
programs, At The Movies. He will take over the reigns from Roger Ebert and
Richard Roeper to star in the next generation of the acclaimed series
alongside Ben Mankiewicz. Ben's movie reviews and celebrity interviews are
seen on E! News, The Daily 10, and E! Online, as well as in his signature
segment and webpage called "The Lyons Den." The multi-tasking Lyons can
also be seen as the West Coast Entertainment correspondent for ABC's Good
Morning America, doing profiles on movie makers such as Indiana Jones
producer Frank Marshall and interviews with celebrities like Dwayne Johnson
and Abigail Breslin for the top-rated morning show. Lyons currently resides
in Los Angeles.
Asha Kuerten, popular Australian TV personality, has hosted various
charity and media events, film screenings, and short film festivals around
Australia. She began her career as the host of Australia's Channel 9
afternoon kids' variety show, [Hot] Source. After two years and 200
episodes, she made the move to Sydney to host The Disney Channel's Studio
Disney. Asha also had a guest spot hosting MTV's 2005 TRL Awards. In April
2006, Asha was nominated as Favourite Female Personality at the ASTRA
awards and soon after landed the hosting role on FOX8's music show CD:LIVE.
Asha is currently the host of the Channel 9 Saturday morning music magazine
show The Music Jungle. She is also the 2008 face of skate brand Element.
My Family's Got GUTS is an extreme sports competition series that
brings families together where every member of the team -- from the
smallest to the strongest -- plays a vital role and works together to
complete each challenge. Each episode will feature two teams of four
players (two adults and two kids) who gather in the Extreme Arena to
compete against each other in multiple rounds of events that put a twist on
today's sports. In the final round, the families face off on a new updated
3D, super challenging version of the original GUTS' Aggro Crag fantasy
mountain. The team with the most points going into the Crag round wins a
time advantage, but the team who wins the Crag round wins the game.
The original GUTS was hosted by Mike O'Malley (Yes, Dear; Get the
Picture) and aired on Nickelodeon from September 28, 1992, through October
1995. The half-hour action-sports game show allowed kid contestants to live
out some of their greatest sports fantasies in a competitive arena. There
were several different types of sporting events featured, including
basketball, baseball, football and soccer, while other events made use of a
wave pool, a racing track and fantasy ski slope.
About Worldwide Biggies
Created by renowned children's and family entertainment hit-maker Albie
Hecht, Worldwide Biggies, is a new digital entertainment studio creating
web-based intellectual properties for kids, families and young adults that
are designed for additional distribution in the film, TV and licensing
arenas. Worldwide Biggies launched its first multi-platform hit on
Nickelodeon and Nick.com last year with The Naked Brothers Band and has
produced the Video Game Awards on Spike TV, which Hecht created during his
tenure as the network's president.
Worldwide Biggies has also created the community based competitions
Worldwide Fido (http://www.worldwidefido.com) a website dedicated to
user-submitted videos of dogs, and, in partnership with TMZ.com Star vs.
Star (http://www.starvsstar.com) an online celebrity fantasy league. The digital
studio recently launched The Princess Bride Game
(http://www.princessbridegame.com), the first-ever downloadable video game based
on the classic film. It has also created the humorous webisode series
MoCap, LLC -- a mockumentary of a video game motion capture studio.
Worldwide Biggies' affiliated non-profit Shine Global was nominated for an
Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category this year for
War/Dance, a documentary set against the backdrop of Uganda's 20 year civil
war.
Nickelodeon, now in its 29th year, is the number-one entertainment
brand for kids. It has built a diverse, global business by putting kids
first in everything it does. The company includes television programming
and production in the United States and around the world, plus consumer
products, online, recreation, books, magazines and feature films.
Nickelodeon's U.S. television network is seen in more than 96 million
households and has been the number-one-rated basic cable network for 14
consecutive years. Nickelodeon and all related titles, characters and logos
are trademarks of Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B).
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