Fox Greenlights Game Shows The Masked Singer and Mental Samurai – Today’s News: Our Take

The Fox network, in the midst of huge change as its studio partner gets absorbed by Disney, is already at the point of “alright, let’s try this and see what happens.” Fox Entertainment Group CEO Dana Walden announced two new game shows at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, and they both sound absolutely bonkers.

The first is The Masked Singer, in which celebrities perform karaoke while wearing elaborate, face-and-body-hiding costumes. The panel of celebrity judges — Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy, Nicole Scherzinger and Robin Thicke — then has to guess who the singer is. Fox teases that “celebrity competitors have earned a total of 65 Grammy nominations, 16 Emmy Award nominations, 16 multi-platinum albums and 4 Super Bowl titles.” It’s based on a hugely popular South Korean format and hosted by Nick Cannon. Ken Jeong and Jenny McCarthy together is going to be a lot. Here’s a clip from the Korean version, and it looks dope, tbh.

The other is Mental Samurai, hosted and produced by Rob Lowe. On this show, it sounds like competitors will basically run a mental obstacle course? It’s a little hard to envision. “Not only does the course test their acumen in categories of knowledge, memory, numbers and sequencing, but players will also have to contend with being transported around the set at high speeds in a specially designed capsule that is capable of rotating 360 degrees,” Fox says. 360 degrees? That’s like, all of the possible degrees! Sounds weird! Rob Lowe is doing it because he’s been into mental challenge shows since he won The $10,000 Pyramid when he was 15, which is a fun fact.

The Masked Singer will premiere in January. Mental Samurai doesn’t have a date yet, but will premiere in the 2018-2019 season.