[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'150532\' date=\'Apr 19 2007, 02:03 AM\']
After looking at the Amazon page, I have this to say: It sure took Chuck long enough to finish the idea.
In 1979, Stephen King published The Long Walk under his alter-ego pseudonym Richard Bachman. And he even went to the "death sport" well two times, with The Running Man also. (And yes, the book far outshined the film)
Anyway, for most of The Long Walk, each chapter opens with a memorable quote or catch phrase from the land of game shows. One of those happens to be "The ultimate game show would be one where the losing contestant was killed." (Chapter 4, in fact.)
So obviously Chuck has been noodling with this concept for a while. And yet, I don't fear for the collapse of civilization. The shelf life of watching people eat random crap and dive out of helicopters was about five-and-a-half years. Distraction had one series in the states. And perhaps the most famous of all, The Chamber still has three episodes we haven't seen. And even that seemed to be more about dealing with the annoyances of the capsule than the difficulty of the questions.[/quote]
He had been talking since at least the 70s about a format he called "Greed," where contestants would be offered money to do various unsavory things, from stealing a lollipop from a baby to--killing a person. It was meant partly in jest, but I wouldn't put it past him to toss it out to a network exec if there had been any way in the world that they would've been interested.
And "Distraction" ran two cycles in the U.S.