What happens when a bunch of reality TV stars get together at a luxe Rocky Mountain chalet and play games against one another? On YouTube, Alex Cooper‘s Unwell Winter Games will answer that question.
The upcoming series, which is set to premiere on April 6, will be one of the biggest productions to come out of Cooper’s two-year-old Unwell Network. The creator and podcast host has assembled a star-studded lineup by sourcing talent from the worlds of reality TV, high society, and creator content. The competitors who will participate in the Unwell Winter Games will travel to Park City, Utah, where they will be split into two teams and pitted against one another across a series of physical and mental challenges.
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
If that sounds familiar, it’s because the Unwell Winter Games have a lot in common with other star-driven competition franchises. With its team-based challenges (like in CBS’ Survivor), its luxurious setting (like in Peacock’s The Traitors), and its cast of antiheroes (like in another Peacock show, House of Villains), Cooper’s project is leaving no reality TV stone unturned.
To add a novel twist to those familiar proceedings, the Unwell Winter Games will feature talent from the Unwell roster, including TikTok it girl Hallie Batchelder. “The show promises fierce competition, unexpected alliances and the kind of unfiltered drama that has defined Unwell across its programming slate,” reads a statement from Cooper’s company.
Though the reality competition landscape is already quite saturated, the arrival of the Unwell Winter Games is well-timed. Producers of major reality franchises are doing whatever they can to incorporate digital creators into their shows. That’s how we got MrBeast in Survivor and Charli D’Amelio in Dancing with the Stars.
If showrunners aren’t careful, however, overtures to the creator world can go disastrously wrong. ABC recently put itself in a multi-million-dollar hole after pulling a Bachelorette season that was supposed to star influencer Taylor Frankie Paul. When domestic violence allegations against Paul resurfaced, onlookers wondered why ABC had greenlit the season in the first place.
Now, Alex Cooper is here to show the traditional TV oldheads a better way to merge reality TV with the creator economy. On Unwell Winter Games, an eclectic mix of personalities — including scam artist Anna Delvey, Love Island vet Ekin Su Cülcüloğlu, and WWE star Saraya Bevis — will rub shoulders with social media standouts like Alyssa Violet and Hannah Stocking.
If you want to see how all those big egos clash with one another, subscribe to the official Unwell YouTube channel. I would have loved it if Cooper had worked her rival Alix Earle into the show, but that might have caused too much drama for one chalet to handle.
