World-champion gymnast Simone Biles is getting her own Snap reality series, while top digital influencer siblings Charli and Dixie D’Amelio will be coming back for a second season of their competition series on Snapchat.
The Snap originals announcements are part of the company’s 2022 NewFronts presentation for advertisers, unveiled Tuesday.
The 10-episode “Daring Simone Biles” is expected to debut in the third quarter of 2022. The show follows the gymnast, who has won 32 Olympic and World Championship medals, as she takes all-new risks trying things she’s never done before — from beekeeping to DJ’ing. It’s produced for Snap by Propagate Content’s Big Breakfast and Kids at Play.
“Charli vs. Dixie” Season 2, from Westbrook Media in collaboration with Five All In the Fifth Entertainment, will return later this year. The D’Amelio sisters, who rose to fame on TikTok, will again go head-to-head in various challenges that test their bravery, athleticism and ingenuity while their squad of famous friends judge from the sidelines. According to Snap, more than 20 million Snapchat users have watched Season 1 of “Charli vs. Dixie.”
Also returning for Season 2 is “The Me and You Show,” Snap’s personalized sketch comedy show that uses Snapchat’s Cameo technology to turn you into the lead actor in funny scenes with your best friends on the app. Over 50 million Snapchatters have watched the first season of “The Me and You Show,” which comes from Big Breakfast and Kids at Play.
Snap also touted traction for other recent originals featuring high-profile talent: According to the company, Megan Thee Stallion’s “Off Thee Leash with Megan Thee Stallion” and “Addison Rae Goes Home” have each garnered more than 16 million viewers each since premiering earlier in 2022.
“The core of our originals slate is to entertain, educate and inform,” said Anjuli Millan, Snap’s senior manager for original content. “We’re very grateful we’re able to put shows together in an authentic way, with content that resonates with our users.”
Other new shows on the Snap originals slate include:
- “La’Ron in a Million”: Host of of Snapchat’s fastest-growing accounts, social media star and NAACP Image Award winner La’Ron Hines became a sensation with his hilarious “Are You Smarter Than a Preschooler” videos. In this unscripted series, he must now find a way to balance his life back at home with his L.A. dreams and rapid rise to fame.
- “Reclaim(ed)”: Snap’s first Canadian original dives deep today’s Indigenous culture with hosts Marika Sila and Kairyn Potts, who reframe and reclaim cultural traditions and social issues from a Gen Z point of view. The series comes from Indigenous-owned production company Eagle Vision.
- “Run for Office”: Docuseries that will follow eight Gen Z and Millennial political candidates from across the U.S. as they run for local political offices in the 2022 primary and general elections. Produced in collaboration with Snap’s policy team and inspired by the success of Snap’s Run for Office mini-app that helps Snapchat users run for local offices.
During its NewFronts session, Snap also announced that it has extended content deals with the NFL, NBA and WNBA. For the first time, the NFL and NBA will collaborate with Snap on a number of Spotlight Challenges — inviting users to post their own videos based on a theme or hashtag — throughout the year. Under their multiyear renewal, the NFL and Snap will collaborate on immersive AR experiences for some of the league’s biggest events; according to Snap, Snapchat users in North America engaged with AR during Super Bowl LVI Sunday more than 2.1 billion times.
In addition, Snap announced a new partnership with Cameo, the company that sells celebrity video shout-outs. The companies are launching a new global offering, the Snap x Cameo Advertiser Program, which will let Snapchat video advertisers partner with Cameo’s 45,000-plus global talent pool to create custom short-form video ads for Snapchat.
Since first launching originals in 2016 — starting with the Peter Hamby-hosted “Good Luck America” politics show, which continues to be produced daily — Snap has released two slates of originals per year. The October 2021 lineup included new series “Level Up with Stephen Curry,” which will air this summer, featuring the two-time NBA MVP mentoring a new generation of stars and empowering them to raise their game both on and off the court. The show comes from Curry’s Unanimous Media and Portal A.
