MTV is hoping to scare the pants off the contestants of “Road Rules” when the new season takes off this year.
The show – an extreme sports/adventure/reality game-show – will force its players to confront some of their deepest fears, which they unwittingly revealed during the show and its casting sessions.
“Their fears can be anything,” said co-executive producer Jonathan Murray. “From walking 2,500 feet in the air on a plank between two untethered hot-air balloons,” to playing in a game show against their parents “to find out just how much their parents really know about them.”
“Road Rules,” entering its ninth season on June 19 (calling it “Road Rules: Maximum Velocity Tour”) follows the adventures of six 18-25 year-olds who, along with thousands of others, tried out for the show.
They live together for about five weeks in an RV and are videotaped and guided on a strange road trip across a continent by a set of mysterious clues.
If they complete all the missions, they get to split a $100,000 prize.
Each clue leads them to a mission or contest that the team, working together, must complete in order to find its next destination.
Some of the missions and contests for this season range from swimming with great white sharks to performing stunts thousands of feet in the air.
Other tasks include a trip in Africa to battle the crew for that other MTV reality show, “The Real World,” a winter sports competition in the snow covered peaks of Park City Utah, and even (gasp!), an encounter against the Playboy Playmate Extreme Team in a synchronized swimming contest.
As a whole, “Road Rules,” has been overhauled this year in order to make it look less like “The Real World.”
“Now when you look at these two show, they look distinctly different,” Murray said.
As part of the changes, the producers added a new character called the Roadmaster, a mysterious figure who controls the game, knows a lot about the contestants and uses the information to scare them – kind of like Regis Philbin, but without the shiny neckties.
“The show has grown every year in ratings,” co-executive producer Mary-Ellis Bunim said. “We just gave it a super-push this time around.”