Escape the Night

Escape the Night is an American reality television series hosted by Joey Graceffa that was first broadcast on June 22, 2016 on YouTube Premium. The series follows fantasy plots based in horror and murder mystery aesthetics. The fourth season was released on July 11, 2019. The series is produced by Brian Graden Media. It was the longest running series on YouTube Premium until its cancellation in 2020.
Premise.
The series follows The Savant (Joey Graceffa) as he finds himself in an estate in a past era, where he invites a number of guests to a party which requires them to act and dress as various personas from that era. Once there, they are cut off from the outside world, challenged to survive the night and escape the estate. To do this, the guests team up with him to participate in challenges and escape room puzzles, competing with each other to escape from the historical era by solving and completing them. At the end of each episode, two guests are voted into a challenge to compete against each other, where the losing guest is eliminated via a fictional death until one or more guests ultimately win and are sent back to the modern world.
Production.
When YouTube Premium launched in October 2015, Graceffa's show was one of ten exclusive original series scheduled to debut in 2016, and was still an untitled project. The series was set to be produced by Brian Graden Media, and began filming in a house near Valencia, California. Graceffa said that the show was inspired by an episode of television show "Lizzie McGuire" themed around a murder mystery, and was also closely related to the 1985 film "Clue". Graden called the show "a hybrid between scripted mystery and reality elimination show".
The series debuted on June 22, 2016, with two episodes going live. The premiere episode had 11.3 million views and 1.1 billion social impressions. The show was renewed for a second season in October 2016, and was scheduled to debut on June 22, 2017. In May 2018, Graceffa confirmed there would be a third season, which debuted on June 21, 2018. The fourth season, which made it the longest running original series on YouTube, premiered on July 11, 2019. The first episode of season 4 premiered simultaneously at VidCon during a panel conference with Graceffa, and was also available to watch for free on YouTube.
Escape the Night: Escape Room.
The Escape the Night: Escape Room was an immersive escape room centered around the fourth season of "Escape the Night". The escape room was a limited event exclusively in Beverly Hills, California, that ran from August 9, 2019, to August 27, 2019. The escape room had multiple rooms to venture through, with surprise guest appearances from Graceffa, Jack O'Connor (Mortimer), and Eva Augustina Sinotte (The Sorceress).
Board game and cancellation.
In June 2020, Graceffa announced via vlog that due to COVID-19's impact on Hollywood and television, Season 5 was postponed indefinitely, but teased a new interactive fan version. Fans of the show signed up to an email list in order to receive updates about the new project. In July 2020, a Kickstarter campaign was started to fund a board game based on the series; its goal of $30,000 was achieved in just 3 hours. It was formally announced the next day.
In June 2020, it was confirmed that YouTube Premium had declined to renew the show for a fifth season, canceling its longest running original series.
Elimination charts.
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