Following the Jeopardy! hosting debacle earlier this year, legendary actor LeVar Burton has partnered with Hasbro to secure new television hosting pursuits.
Hasbro’s continued push to adapt its board and card game holdings – such as Magic: The Gathering – into lucrative television projects will bring audiences an updated iteration of a Trivial Pursuit game show, with Burton at the helm. The trivia board game has lent itself easily to the game show format in the past with, previous versions of Trivial Pursuit hosted by Wink Martindale and Christopher Knight.
“LeVar Burton has been an iconic member of American pop culture for decades from Roots to Reading Rainbow to Star Trek and beyond,” eOne President of Global Unscripted Television Tara Long said. “His love for intellectual curiosity paired with his ability to connect with audiences worldwide make him the perfect partner to bring Hasbro’s beloved trivia game to households in a new and exciting way.”
“Trivial Pursuit is one of the best-known brands in the gaming universe. I am thrilled to have partnered with Hasbro and eOne to bring this beloved game to market as a premium show for television,” Burton commented. In addition to hosting, Burton will likewise serve as an executive producer on the game show. No network of streaming platform is currently attached.
A welcoming partnership with Hasbro feels a just reward for the Star Trek actor, who campaigned heartedly for the position of Jeopardy! host after Alex Trebek’s passing. The fan consensus was that Burton, the former Reading Rainbow host, was the perfect choice for the job. However, an outpouring of fan support amounted to only a brief guest-stint as host for the actor followed frustrating network foot-dragging that eventually led Burton to rescind his name from the running altogether.
Now Burton will be handed the reigns of Trivial Pursuit, an equally iconic trivia game that first made its way to tabletops in 1979. Since the game’s inception, it has been released in 17 languages across 26 countries with a bevy of specialty versions for savants of certain trivia topics.
Other upcoming projects for Burton include Tom Swift, a spinoff of The CW’s Nancy Drew, and Butterfly in the Sky, an upcoming documentary about Reading Rainbow.
Source: THR
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