With pre-production that's been underway, filming is about to start on the 7th season of Survivor SA on M-Net (DStv 101) - set on the most remote island location that the South African version of the show has ever done - "extremely far, far away" on literally the other side of the world and including some much older contestants than before.
TVwithThinus can reveal that Survivor SA: Island of Secrets, with South African production company Afrokaans again producing the Banijay Group's Survivor format show for its second consecutive time, will have 21 contestants for its 7th season, again filming for 39 days like the previous season.
With Nico Panagio once again back as Survivor SA host, the new season is set on a location further away from South Africa than ever before, with the show that previously had exotic set-piece seasons playing out as far away as Panama, the Maldives, Malaysia and even the Philippines in the previous 6th season.
With a rough time difference of between 10 to 11 hours compared to South Africa, it takes the production crew, filming equipment and contestants between 4 to 5 different - including extremely long - flights just to reach the fantasy island locale in its far-flung time zone.
The travel time? Roughly over a 24-hour day and a half spent on planes and waiting in international airports for flight connections to get there.
Coming with the exclusive M-Net show however - that will once again feature built-in scene-chewing location shots including waterfalls, dense jungle vegetation and tropical palm trees, beautiful beaches and vivid blue hues of completely transparent waters - is a premium TV production price to match.
With Survivor SA: Island of Secrets currently in pre-production and set for broadcast from mid-May on M-Net after the first season finale of The Bachelor SA, Afrokaans will be under extreme time pressure to film, edit and deliver the new season's episodes for playout on air, having roughly three and a half months to do so from when the castaways are dropped on the island, to the broadcast date.
As in the previous season, some of the editing of the thousands of recorded and logged hours will already start and take place in a production room on-location once filming starts.
On Friday morning M-Net showed the gaggle of press and TV critics attending its comprehensive 3-day programming upfront at Gold Reef City in Johannesburg a brand-new teaser of Survivor SA: Island of Secrets containing some brand-new location shots in the video promo that was packaged and emailed from the show's production hub on one of the islands.
Lani Lombard, M-Net's head of publicity, says M-Net will reveal the location of the Island of Secrets soon but only once all of the selected contestants have arrived and filming has started with the 21 contestants in the game.
"Contestants on this season of Survivor South Africa, similar to all previous ones, are not allowed to know beforehand who the other contestants are or the location. Even when they arrive at the mystery location they are kept in isolation."
"If they know what the location is, they can research quite a lot about the location, so the whole idea behind Survivor is for it to be a surprise for them when they go."
"As soon as all of the contestants are there, M-Net will make an announcement of where the latest season is set," says Lani Lombard.
"This season is going to be very interesting. Of course the contestants are going to be very different to the previous season's contestants. I can reveal that there are a couple of much older contestants this year, and then there's the Island of Secrets where a lot will happen that will create all kinds of drama."
"There's a big difference between the ages of the contestants this season - there are very young contestants and there are much older contestants as well, and there are very feisty contestants, and then very funny contestants as well."
