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After the smash-hit success of ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire the year before, Fox raised the ante on February 15, 2000, with a live special titled Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? Mike Darnell, Fox’s head of reality programming at the time, told Entertainment Weekly in 2024 that he thought of the idea while attending a family wedding and feeling jealous of the ABC game show’s success. “I’m very competitive, so it’s making me crazy. I am literally thinking to myself, ‘What else do people want? They want to be millionaires.’ And I’m watching the wedding, and I’m thinking about the show, and I’m watching the wedding, and I’m like, ‘Who wants to marry a millionaire!’ And then I had to one-up it, so I called it Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” In the resulting two-hour special, 50 women competed to win...

The folks behind the Screaming Soup! YouTube channel uploaded a very cool video over the weekend: a 3 hour retrospective documentary that covers the entire Attack of the Killer Tomatoes franchise, which includes four feature films and two seasons of an animated TV series. Best of all, Screaming Soup! has made this documentary available to watch free of charge, and you can check it out in the embed at the bottom of this article!

The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes retrospective documentary has the following synopsis: Screaming Soup! Presents the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes Retrospective is the most in-depth documentary ever made on everyone’s favorite red menace from the produce aisle. Busting with clips and exclusive interviews from the Killer Tomatoes creators to their cast and crew over four films and a short lived cartoon series, this epic documentary will be the ultimate resource for killer tomato fans, unveiling...

It’s hard to over-exaggerate just how big of a phenomenon “Joe Millionaire” was in 2003. Part of the early “Outlandish Age” of reality TV — particularly under the watch of then-Fox alternative boss Mike Darnell — “Joe Millionaire” set ratings records for an unscripted series, some of which still stand to this day.

“Joe Millionaire” ended its finale with nearly 40 million viewers tuning in to catch its big reveal — in which an unsuspecting woman discovered that the wealthy man she was dating was more hundredaire than millionaire. After the sequel fizzled, however, the franchise was shelved and sat dormant for nearly two decades. Until now.

The new series “Joe Millionaire: For Richer or Poorer,” which premieres in January, follows two men: One wealthy, one not so much. As they date 20 women — who know just one “Joe” is a millionaire, but don’t known who — the goal is to find true love while also learning whether wealth vs.

Wtf is she wearing?! Heidi Montag raised some eyebrows at We tv's "Evolution Of The Relationship Reality Show" event in Los Angeles on Thursday night, for sporting some very usual arm accessories. The former "Hills" star stepped out with strips of black tape on her right arm as she posed for pictures -- and packed on the Pda -- with hubby Spencer Pratt. Doesn't that look like the tape they use to treat sports injuries?! Whoa! See "Joe Millionaire" Star Evan Marriott Now! The blonde bombshell paired her strange accessory with a black tank top, leather pants and a hair-raising 'do that swept her long locks away from her face. Another former reality star to turn heads was Darva Conger, who you might recognize from 2000's "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" The now-49-year-old beauty famously "won" the show, marrying Rick Rockwell on the season finale. Two months after the show aired,...

“For us, the basic dating format doesn’t work,” TLC general manager Amy Winter said today at the TCA Summer TV Press Tour, by way of explaining the network’s Secret Princes. TLC — which owns the bridal-dress, people-with-too-many-babies, Momzillas, and weird-obsessions programming threads — also wants to own the dating-show genre. It’s got its work cut out, what with ABC’s The Bachelor and The Bachelorette so well established in that space, among other dating shows. But TLC persevered and came up with Secret Princes — one of those wonderful TLC series that leave you wondering if Man really is Nature’s Last Word. It’s a dating show in which the dating is the least interesting thing going on. It’s actually a pampered fish-out-of-water series in which four guys who purport to be “international royalty” (in much the same way as Fox defined Rick Rockwell as a multimillionaire) leave their native land,...

New York -- Fox reality chief Mike Darnell said Friday that he's exiting the network after an 18-year stay, ending a reign that – depending on one's point of view – has made TV more exciting or more squalid. And great for Fox.

In a puckishly worded announcement, the 50-year-old Darnell said that the end of his current contract in June presented him with a decision: "either stay (and basically admit to myself I was going to retire at Fox ... not a terrible choice) or leave and try something new."

"I've been in `reality' since before it was even called that," added the exec who was once called "the world's scariest programmer." But now, "with hundreds of channels and limitless ways to watch television, I've decided this was the perfect time to take advantage of the rapidly changing marketplace."

Darnell, who was named the network's president of alternative entertainment in 2007, joined Fox in 1994 as director of specials.

Sgt. Timothy Poe sparked an uproar this week when it turned out he likely lied on America's Got Talent about getting injured in Afghanistan. But he's not the only guy to ever dupe a reality show. Now that E! News has confirmed from Defenders of Freedom—the charitable group supporting the troops in which Poe was involved—that the aspiring country crooner was actually wounded in training, not combat as he claimed, and that a photo that aired on Talent of Poe in action (see above) wasn't even him, we thought it'd be a good time to look back at five of the most memorable reality show frauds. Let the vetting begin! 1. Rick Rockwell (Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?): TV...

One-time porn star and pretend singer Kim Kardashian is marrying Kris Humphries, the NBA's 22nd best power forward, this October in a two-part extravaganza on E!.

Well, technically it's just a broadcast of their August 20 wedding, but that's not important.

The event, dubbed "Kim's Fairytale Wedding: A Kardashian Event" will offer all the pomp, circumstance and commercialism you've comes to expect from televised nuptials like Darva Conger & Rick Rockwell, Heidi & Spencer, Nick & Vanessa and Carmen Electra & Dave Navarro (as if anyone remembers this one).

E!, which might as well change its name to K! considering all the Kardashian programming they air, will start coverage October 9 at 8 p.m. Et and continue it the following evening at 9 p.m. Et.  

The network promises viewers will see everything "from lavish wedding planning to the fabulous parties." However an E! representative would not confirm whether The Butt and The Benchwarmer would actually walk...

...on how the cultural embrace of violent misogynist celebrity Charlie Sheen and his ongoing meltdown is little different from other reality television: [M]isogyny is embedded within the DNA of the reality genre. One of the very first millennial shows, in fact, “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire,” was notable in that it auctioned off what producers called the “biggest prize of all”: a supposedly wealthy B-movie writer named Rick Rockwell — who was later revealed to have had a restraining order filed against him by a woman he’d threatened to kill. According to Ms. Pozner, the reaction of one of the producers of “Multimillionaire” was, “Great! More publicity!”...

Long before The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, there was Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, a 2000 live reality TV special seen on Fox by 23 million viewers where 50 women vied to marry, on the spot, Rick Rockwell, a self-proclaimed wealthy businessman. Darva Conger, then 35 and an emergency room nurse, "won" the contest -- and the infamy that went along with it. "It was fun at the time," Conger says about her short-lived fame, which she parlayed into a Playboy cover and a stint on Celebrity Boxing. "I wasn't working and it was ridiculously easy money for what seemed like very little.

Now that Julie Miller has fully interrogated our newest Bachelor, we can get down to speculating -- for the fourteenth time in nine years -- what kind of person honestly thinks he'll find love on national television. We can't let people like Ray J make us forget how justifiably perplexed we were with initial love-hunters like Rick Rockwell and Flavor Flav. Even if the newest troubadour is (sigh) sho handshum.