'Double Dare' to return to Nickelodeon this summer

The formerly Philadelphia-shot kids game show Double Dare is returning to Nickelodeon this summer, the network announced today.

The new show, Nick said in a statement, will feature challenges and games similar to the original Double Dare, which began airing on the network in 1986. On the show, two teams compete for prizes through a variety of activities, including trivia rounds, sloppy physical challenges, and an obstacle course that featured now-famous stations like an enormous human hamster wheel, or Double Dare's iconic nose prop.

Fans can also expect appearances from current celebrities, as well as throwbacks to Double Dare's heyday. The network has ordered 40 episodes of the series.

The original Double Dare series first aired on Nickelodeon in 1986 and was filmed at the WHYY-TV studios up through April 1989, when production moved to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. The show became one of the era's most popular daily shows, and entered syndication in 1988. Reboots and retreads like Super Sloppy Double Dare and Family Double Dare followed throughout the 1990s, with Nick finally walking away from the show after the turn of the millennium thanks to the ill-fated Double Dare 2000.

Nick has not yet directly addressed original host Marc Summers' involvement with the Double Dare reboot, but his name was not included in their announcement. In a reply to a request for comment, Summers said to "stand by" for "some good news to come," but did not elaborate.

As Summers, 66, told the Inquirer last year, Double Dare was his first big break as a TV host, and came along when he was 34 years old — right around the time he started thinking a career in entertainment wasn't for him.

"I had one foot out the door of show business because I didn't think it was ever going to happen for me," Summers said. "But being in Los Angeles for 13 years and getting turned down thousands of times, I was bound to get something."

Summers exited the show as host after it was initially canceled in 1993, moving on to talk shows like Our Home and Biggers & Summers on Lifetime. He later made a name for himself at Food Network with shows including Unwrapped, and Ultimate Recipe Showdown, as well as Dinner: Impossible and Restaurant: Impossible. Today, he operates his company, Marc Summers Productions, out of Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

Summers also hosts Philly Loves Beer's annual Dunkel Dare competition during Philly Beer Week. A drinking game modeled after Double Dare, the show features Summers taking up his old role as game show host, but with more drunk people doing physical challenges.

"You can't do Marc Summers/Nickelodeon stuff without physical challenges," he told the Inquirer last year.

Nick's Double Dare revival is the latest television show to be revived in 2018's rash of reboots Earlier this year, MTV brought back TRL and Jersey Shore, while ABC revived Roseanne and Netflix brought back Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Lost In Space. Reboots of Murphy Brown and The Continental, among others, are forthcoming.