New Shows From Bear Grylls, ‘True Blood’ Creators, Jukin Media Headed To Facebook Watch

Facebook continues to announce new, original series for its Watch platform, this latest round featuring Bear Grylls, a group of stunt performers, and a couple of True Blood creators. At NATPE today in Miami, Facebook’s head of global creative strategy, Ricky Van Veen, gave the names of three series headed to the budding video platform.

Reality series Fly Guys will come to Facebook Watch on February 2. Each 12 to 15-minute episode follows a group of European stunt performers as they create and then fulfill physical stunt challenges. Filming locations will include cliffs, castles, and rock quarries. Fly Guys is produced by Jukin Media.

The Grylls show dubbed Bear Grylls: Face the Wild will debut March 21 on Facebook Watch. Also consisting of 10 episodes, it will surprise one Grylls fan per episode by inviting them to join the master adventurer on his difficult journeys. Produced by Electus and Bear Grylls Ventures, the show will also have an accompanying Facebook page where viewers can engage with Grylls and his guests.

Lastly, the show currently known as Sacred Lies has yet to get a launch date. Its plot, as described in the release, will be a little bit Grimms fairy tale, a little bit The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly, a young adult novel by Stephanie Oakes about a teenager in juvenile detention who refuses to speak to the FBI about a cult that entrapped her family and took both her hands. Casting for the series is happening now.

Raelle Tucker, producer of True Blood and a Jessica Jones episode, will produce the series with True Blood director Scott Winant and Blumhouse Television. Blumhouse Television has been active in the digital video space as of late, recently announcing that its new horror anthology series would appear on streaming service Hulu.

These shows, said Facebook’s Van Veen at NATPE, will “help continue our mission of combining incredibly talented people and great stories with the social fabric of Facebook.” They’ll join projects featuring other high profile names like Kerry Washington, whose series about Chicago high school students, Five Points, is also headed to Facebook Watch.

During his NATPE keynote, Van Veen, who launched College Humor, described Facebook Watch’s programming strategy as reliant on social integrations, like the ones viewers will engage in on Facebook pages corresponding to specific shows. This will make Watch native series stand out against those on streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, which do not offer a social environment for viewers to discuss what they’ve just watched.

Van Veen also mentioned that Facebook will use an algorithm to keep spoilers from getting into Watch viewers’ news feeds. He further assured NATPE audiences that Facebook’s recent pivot to favor users’ friends in their feeds over content from publishers and brands will have no effect on Facebook Watch.