Mark Cuban's "The Benefactor" coming this summer to ABC

[Pavan]

Contestants butter up Cuban for $1 mil
Alphabet reality show eyes summer bow


Forget the Donald: Billionaire businessman and owner of NBA's Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban plans to make some lucky soul an instant millionaire via an ABC reality show dubbed "The Benefactor."
Premise of the show is simple: A pool of roughly 30 contestants competes to win the affection of Cuban, the oft-colorful owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks. The person Cuban likes most at the end of the game gets $1 million of Cuban's own money.

"I'm not looking to find out who is the grossest, funniest, prettiest, smartest or able to go without food or water the longest," Cuban said. "The right person is going to get on my good side at the right time, and whoever that is, is going to walk away with a check from me for $1 million."

Alphabet has greenlit production on six episodes of "The Benefactor," which comes from creator David Young and U.K.-based 12 Yard Prods. In addition to Young, Clay Newbill ("The Mole") will exec produce, along with Todd Wagner, CEO of Cuban's 2929 Prods. ("Star Search.")

Skein is expected to start production in April in time for a targeted summer bow. Casting has just started via ABC.com for contestants 21 and over.

ABC optioned "The Benefactor" more than a year ago, though the success of NBC's "The Apprentice" seems to have added urgency to the project in the minds of top Alphabet execs.

Young, a former BBC exec who helped develop "The Weakest Link" and "Dog Eat Dog," said the idea behind "The Benefactor" is to open up the potential pool of winners to a much broader range of people than the standard reality competish.

"If you're not smart enough, you can't win on 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.' If you're not strong enough, you can't be on 'Survivor.' If you can't sing, you can't win 'American Idol,' " Young said. "We wanted to create an egalitarian reality show where any adult could win."

Key to making the show work was finding the right "Benefactor" to give away the coin.

"We wanted someone who had lived the American dream and could help someone else achieve it," Young said.Exact details of how the show will work are still sketchy, though Young said the would-be millionaires will participate in a number of challenges designed to allow Cuban to evaluate each player. Much of the skein will evolve based upon the whims of Cuban, however.

"We want to remain flexible in order to maximize Mark's personality," said ABC alternative topper Andrea Wong. "Every other show we've done has been firmly formatted, but this will be more spontaneous. Mark is a guy who doesn't believe in rules."

Skein will feature "the usual twists and turns," Young said, with Cuban admitting that "some of the rules (will be) made up along the way."

Cuban said he's hoping to have fun with the show and discover someone who "doesn't look at wealth as a curse or an obligation."

"If you have a lot of money and can't enjoy it, you're an idiot," he said. "Whoever walks away with my money is going to be somebody who can really enjoy it."

Cuban said he won't be making "one nickel from the show," noting that whatever fee he would have gotten from ABC will be used to reward those participants who don't win the million-dollar prize.

"If there's something that gets me excited about someone, we've got a slush fund we can use," he said.

It's not yet clear whether Cuban will be able to write off his $1 million giveaway as a business or charitable expense.

Skein will be shot in HD, not surprising given Cuban owns cabler HDNet.

Cuban sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo! in 1999, taking in $5.7 billion. He purchased the Mavs in January 2000.

Young said 12 Yard, having set up "The Benefactor" in the U.S., is already looking to do a U.K. take on the format.

"In the U.S., we were looking for billionaires. In the U.K., we're looking at millionaires," he said.