One year ago, Gold Rush star Todd Hoffman tipped Monsters and Critics to a potential new show he was working on with his producing partner to pitch to Discovery and other networks including Netflix and Amazon.
The premise of his show, as the former Gold Rush star revealed in our exclusive interview last October, was to see complete greenhorns (everyday amateur people) competing as miners to recover gold.
Now the show’s development has been confirmed, with Deadline revealing that Hoffman and his Züm Media partner Jose Behar have signed a deal with Ice Road Truckers super producer Thom Beers and Jeff Conroy, of BoBCat Studios, the production company behind Deadliest Catch and Bering Sea Gold.
Here’s what Hoffman told Monsters and Critics about the show, tentatively called Greenhorn Gold, in our exclusive chat with him last year:
M&C: Do you think that Gold Rush will have a new version or a spin-off with your son Hunter and maybe Parker and the younger guys down the road? Like a Gold Rush: Millennials?
Todd Hoffman: Here’s what I think is going to happen…I think that there’s a fat kid with a gray beard, a chubby kid with a beard that’s been working on the show for three years, who gives an opportunity to a person out there that’s always wanted to mine — and I’m going to give them a chance to mine.
I’m going to give a greenhorn a chance to make it.
M&C: Are you pitching this to Discovery?
Todd Hoffman: That trumps everything. That trumps Parker [Schnabel] running around the jungle. That trumps me going around doing whatever.
That trumps it because I want to give a hand up to all the fans, all these years that…I would love to try this. I don’t have the money to do the machines. I’d like to open up that door.
I can’t say anything about it because I don’t have anything in writing but I tell you what, I think it’s a 90 per cent chance it’s going to happen and I think people are going to see something they’ve never seen before — and that is an opportunity.
A chance of a lifetime given to several greenhorns to actually live out their dream without dying and never having tried to live that dream.
Picture this: Fifteen [Gold Rush] fans with their bags, and there’s a pile of equipment.
They’re standing on gold under their feet. What are you waiting for, guys? Because you’re going to take that gold home. Or you’re going to get fired trying. One of the two.
I think that that would be the show, giving a hand up to those guys. I don’t think that you could beat that show on TV ever.
Cable, Netflix, Amazon. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. That show there, I think it would the best show on television by far.
M&C: Discovery’s next number one hit.
Todd Hoffman: Maybe so. Maybe so!”
Of his new show, Hoffman told Deadline: “Introducing the world to the prospecting business on ‘Gold Rush’ was incredible; it’s thrilling to give others the chance to replicate that success.
“Thom and Jeff have an unparalleled reputation for telling the stories of America’s unseen heroes, and I couldn’t be more excited to tell these stories with BoBCat.”
Hoffman’s vision of novice miners is a structured tiered competition where forty entrants will be whittled down to twenty in a tryout, and over the course of the series will be one elimination after the next until only six remain at the end of the season.
Those last six will walk away with near $200 thousand to bring home.