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Big Brother filming underway

It's time to go, inside....

TV Tonight hears housemates may have entered the Big Brother house on North Head and filming is now underway for Seven.

The series is under the watch of producer Amelia Fisk (Australian Survivor, The Bachelorette), with Sonia Kruger hosting.

While the show is not Live to air Seven takes the view that post-produced Reality shows have still proven successful in recent years.

Despite some suggestions the show has been brought forward due to My Kitchen Rules ratings, Seven programmer Angus Ross confirmed the show would launch before the Olympics in an interview with TV Tonight in January (before MKR commenced).

“The scale of the Big Brother house that is being built will blow people away. It is a huge, exciting build on North Head in Sydney. It’s like the house at the edge of the world,” he said.

“It’ll start filming very shortly and it will be coming pre-Olympics.”

Angus Ross also confirmed viewers will still vote for a winner, although it isn’t clear if this will entail a Live finale or multiple endings filmed in advance.

Photo: Behind Big Brother.

33 Responses

  1. I’m willing to give it a chance, live or not. I just hope we get a variety of different types of people, not just wannabes searching for their fifteen minutes

  2. I like the rumours of the new game format (I want to see a tactical, strategy game not a popularity contest), but I still think the show should have been live.

  3. Im 100% watching this. I just hope they have at least casted this with people that are not like mafs. We need a variation of people and some real people. Fingers crossed. I think we need to view for ourselves and see what its like. Fingers crossed its good.

    1. I’m a friend of a friend of a contestant. He is much older than the usual aged reality contestants. Channel 7 have focused on diversity in casting.

      And David – as of last night still in lockdown

  4. One of the advantages that Free to air still have is broadcasting live. Instead of taking advantage of that they’re just making this another pre edited reality show. The sunday night live show in front of the audience was the best part for me. When Merlin walked out with that poster was gold.When it gets bit out of control is when its great TV. Have no interest this year.

  5. I’m willing to give this a go but I’m already so disappointed after learning it was returning. Seven seem to be doing everything they can to not give the fans what they want.

  6. We all know most reality shows are filmed in advance but the attraction of BB & others (like Idol or the Voice) where the public votes is that there is a live finale where the winner is announced. That is why the public votes. Not so the producers can manipulate the outcome. Then it just becomes a cash grab by the producers for the votes & the public will not be invested to vote. The appeal of BB was the contestants sitting in the house hearing the crowd cheering whoever had just been evicted.

  7. I’m looking forward to this, but, ask I’ve said before, I’m very concerned about the ‘non-live’ aspect of Big Brother!

    I seriously hope Channel Seven can do this well, because hopefully, fan feedback will led to Big Brother returning to it’s original format for 2021!

  8. The fact that it’s pre-recorded well ahead in advance means that the producers can just walk in and out of the house at will in order to contrive the next scenario. I’m sure they were doing that anyway during the Channel Nine years, but now it’ll be even more blatant.

    I didn’t even know that they held auditions and yet they have already started filming!

  9. I heard it was going to be like the American and Canadian big brothers which I think is a lot more interesting than our tired format anyway. I’ve been watching both the US & Canada versions since Tim Dormer was on the Canadian one and love it!

    1. The American version still has live evictions and a live finale and I assume CTV does the same with BB Canada. And they have live streams via CBS All Access. All to have people more engaged and talk about the show on social media 24/7.

  10. Does a long lead on recording allow more selective editing to create more drama?

    When you’ve got five days worth of footage can the editors can more creative with the story?

  11. I’m a huge fan of Big Brother and prepared to give Seven’s incarnation a go. After Nine’s effort I think Seven are wise to not follow that model. However Ten were the ones who really got it right and is the version that long time fans of the show really want to see return. I think Seven would be making a huge mistake not to give viewers a live eviction show each week to give viewers a sense of involvement. C’mon Seven, it’s not too late to put this in place!

    1. How? The entire season will be in the can before the first episode even airs. If they had an audience for evictions, you would not know who any of the HMs are.

  12. So the house was finished last week and housemates are already inside? this all seems very rushed.

    Seven has another belly flop on it’s hands. Seven should become a 24/7 news channel it’s the only thing they do right

    1. Seven only wins the news ratings because of its absolute dominance of Perth & Adelaide.
      Agree that a pre recorded Big Brother in Australia will be a flop.

    2. When pre-recording, you can get things done easier and quicker, it’s also just a set in a warehouse so it would be far quicker a build than the dreamworld compound + what’s the point of having it lay around for weeks waiting for housemates when they can just get the housemates over ASAP after the build finishes to make sure they meet their pre-olympic deadline.

      And BTW – this season is anything but rushed, it’s just been organised all in advanced before the announcement that it was coming back, For reference – The North Head site was listed for lease in May last year and secret auditions/interviews were held in August.

      1. That makes it worse. Because there were no cattle call auditions they are just going to be wannabe actors, models, ‘influencers’ etc so they all going to be ‘performing’.

        1. Actually it would more be a pool of shortlisted auditionees that didn’t make the cut but they’re interested in casting for other productions. Wouldn’t surprise me if auditionees from MAFS and Survivor ended up on a Big Brother cast instead at all.

  13. What really is the point if it has no live element, no live eliminations, no live crosses to the household. What will Sonia do each episode, introduce a package of filmed highlights from 5 months ago and tell herself how outrageous this batch of housemates are? Will the housemates be discussing events that happened in the world last week, which won’t be broadcast until months later?

    Such a strange decision by Seven… if you don’t want to spend the money to make it great, why bother at all?

    Just call it for what it is, another version of a Love Island type show and leave it at that. It’s not Big Brother.

    1. Actually it’s Love Island that uses the BB model, both shot and turned around in a 24 hour time frame. It was the evictions that were Live (and previously webcams). So Seven is trying to move away from that model.

  14. I was a big fan of the Chrissie Swan season with Reggie as winner and I recall we the audience voted each week, which I am sure occurred each season? I wonder how that will work this time around??

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