MGM Television and Zynga are partnering to develop a new television game show based on “Words With Friends,” the companies announced Wednesday.
Since launching in 2009, “Words With Friends” has been installed more than 200 million times and is one of the App Store’s Top 10 free games of all time. An estimated 55 million Words With Friends matches are played around the world at any given moment and more than 75 million words are played every day.
“The interactive social experience of ‘Words With Friends’ makes it the perfect mobile game for us to bring to prime time, following our success with Beat Shazam on Fox,” said Barry Poznick, president of unscripted television for MGM. “Playing ‘Words’ is a daily ritual for some of the biggest names in Hollywood and we’ve created the perfect format to capture their competitiveness and creative wordplay.”
MGM Television, which is headed by Mark Burnett, currently has unscripted series on all four major TV networks, including “Survivor” for CBS, “The Voice” for NBC, “Shark Tank” on ABC, “Beat Shazam” on Fox, and “Steve Harvey’s Funderdome” on ABC.
“Over the past eight years, ‘Words With Friends’ has proven to be a place where millions of people connect with their friends and family from around the world every day,” said Bernard Kim, president of publishing for Zynga. “We’re proud to partner with MGM, an industry leader in creating innovative and engaging programming, to extend the iconic gameplay and rich social experience of Words With Friends, and our broader collection of With Friends games, to new mainstream entertainment mediums.”
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Source: Variety