Legends Of The Hidden Temple Is Heading Back To TV
If the return of Full House wasn't enough to satisfy your nostalgic entertainment needs, maybe this will do it: Legends of the Hidden Temple, the game show from Nickelodeon's 90s-era past, is heading back to television. Both Legends and former cartoon superstar Hey Arnold! will be resurrected in the form of television movies, and we have interns to thank for making it a reality.
Legends of the Hidden Temple was a children's game show that aired from 1993 to 1995, pitting kids against various temple ruins-themed challenges and sending the finalists into the temple itself. According to Variety, the game show will return to TV as a made-for-television movie set to premiere in the last quarter of this year.
In it, a trio of siblings are tasked with making it through a bunch of obstacles akin to the ones presented in the original series. Elements from the game show will be included, among them being the silver snakes and red jaguars, Steps of Knowledge, the talking head, and a green monkey.
Joining the Hidden Temple movie will be a two-part television movie based on the cartoon Hey Arnold!, which ran from 1996 until 2004. Both of those movies will premiere some time next year, but details are very slight at this time. One Hey Arnold movie already exists, having been released in theaters back in 2002.
Why is Nickelodeon banking on some of its old staples? It seems a half-decade or so ago, some interns working for the company suggested that old Nickelodeon shows could be a source of online viewers, planting the seed of an idea. Nickelodeon executives ultimately dreamed big, envisioning that such resurrected content may do well in regular TV, too. Since then, viewers have been able to watch episodes of old shows late at night on Teen Nick.
That served only to increase the outcry amongst now-grown Nick viewers who want to see their old favorite cartoons and shows return to TV. According to one worker speaking to Variety, these individuals took to social media, with "Interest in the Nick library ... becoming louder and louder and louder."
By resurrecting some of its most demanded and popular old shows, Nickelodeon is banking on existing fans not only watching the shows, but fervently introducing them to their own kids, who will get to enjoy them with updates that bring them in line with the modern world. Whether this generation of children will find the shows as entertaining as their parents once had is yet to be seen, but it is something Nickelodeon considers worth pursuing.
SOURCE: Variety