Watch your back, Justin Timberlake. Punk’d is officially back. Chance the Rapper will host the reboot of MTV’s famous prank series, set to premiere on Quibi.
“Punk’d is one of MTV’s most iconic franchises,” the Grammy award-winning singer, 26, said in a statement on Friday, January 24. “I grew up watching this show and it’s surreal to be in the driver’s seat this time around on Quibi.”
The hilarious show will follow unsuspecting A-list celebrities in to over-the-top situations to see how they’d react. The “marks” will be revealed at a later date.
Punk’d originally aired on MTV from 2003 to 2007 and was created and hosted by Ashton Kutcher. The Ranch star, 41, pulled pranks on some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including Timberlake, Jessica Biel, Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato.
In June 2019, when the news first broke that a reboot of the series was coming, Kutcher responded with a tweet. “I have nothing to do with the new punk’d situation. Hope they get it right,” he wrote at the time.
In September 2019, the comedian revealed some of the secrets of Punk’d, explaining what happened if a celebrity figured it out mid-prank.
“If a mark caught on to what we were doing, we would hit the eject button and then keep the bit up and try to bring somebody else into the scenario so we didn’t lose the money,” he said on Hot Ones. “We’d keep it going on for so long that they’d be like, ‘OK, there’s no way I’m being Punk’d’ and then you’re right back on. A lot of times, somebody would be like, ‘I’m being Punk’d right now, Ashton come out, I’m being Punk’d’ and I would just be like, ‘OK everybody back off and chill.'”
Quibi is a mobile streaming platform, set to launch on April 6, and will deliver “quick bites” of content, i.e. episodes that run 10 minutes or less. The service will cost $4.99 with ads or $7.99 without. The media comany already have many A-list shows in the works, including Chrissy Teigen‘s Chrissy’s Court, Idris Elba‘s Elba vs. Block, Lena Waithe‘s You Ain’t Got Those, Tyra Banks‘ Beauty and many more.
