EXCLUSIVE: The Masked Singer bandwaggon keeps moving at breakneck speed, with Russia the latest country to climb aboard the Korean entertainment show-turned global megahit.
Endemol Shine Group’s Weit Media will produce a local version of the celebrity singing contest for free-to-air television channel NTV, with the nine-part series premiering in primetime next month.
Endemol Shine North America first launched The Masked Singer for Fox last year, acting as a producer-for-hire on the format owned by Korea’s MBC. Endemol Shine stopped making the U.S. show after Fox opened an in-house production company in 2019, but the producer still makes versions in Mexico, Germany and Italy.
The Masked Singer has now been adapted in more than 50 countries after first premiering in Korea in 2015. Season 3 of the U.S. version launched with a record 23.7M viewers earlier this month in a prized slot following the Super Bowl, while the UK edition is also currently performing strongly for ITV.
Weit Media CEO Yulia Sumacheva said she is certain that audiences in Russia “will be equally gripped attempting to guess the celebrities” behind an array of elaborate costumes. The deal follows Weit recently launching a second season of singing show All Together Now on Russian public broadcaster Rossiya 1.