Martin Short is expanding his relationship with Disney, signing on to host a revival of the famed gamer “Match Game.”
Produced by FremantleMedia North America, “Match Game” centered on four contestants competing for $25,000 as they try to match the answers of six celebrities in a game of fill-in-the-blank. The format, which first premiered in 1962 (hosted by Gene Rayburn), has been revived several times in the decades since then.
ABC also ran the previous version of “Match Game,” which was hosted by Alec Baldwin. That edition debuted in 2016, and ran for five seasons (and approximately 69 episodes) before being canceled in 2022. The most recent season was shot before the pandemic began, with nine episodes spread out between May 31, 2020, and Oct. 29, 2020, and then the final two on July 21 and July 28, 2021.
Short and Alycia Rossiter will serve as as executive producers on the new edition. Short, of course, stars on Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building,” which often gets a secondary broadcast run on ABC. As a host, Short helmed a daytime talk show in 1999, and more recently has served as a guest host multiple times on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
The end of Baldwin’s “Match Game” came in the wake of his accidental shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the independent production “Rust” the previous fall. But the show’s wrap was not related to that incident, since “Match Game” hadn’t been in production since 2020, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic — and only aired two new episodes in 2021, which had been left over from the previous year.
Short is represented by WME and Brillstein Entertainment.
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