EXCLUSIVE: Alex Baskin, executive producer of hit reality series such as Vanderpump Rules and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, is expanding into new genres of television, including true-crime and scripted, after leaving MGM-owned Evolution Media.
Baskin has set up 32 Flavors – an ice cream pun – to develop and produce a range of unscripted, scripted and feature film projects including a true-crime podcast Once Upon A Con that he hopes to adapt for TV, and horror satire Skill House starring Bryce Hall and 50 Cent.
Bravo fans need not despair, though, as Baskin will continue to work on a slew of his existing shows. 32 Flavors will co-produce Vanderpump Rules, which is filming its 11th season following the Scandoval ratings bonanza, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Real Housewives of Orange County and Baskin will exec produce Botched for E! and Love in Fairhope for Hulu.
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“I wanted to figure out how to transition and split my time between [these shows] and be able to be completely free to develop whatever I want. It’s really fun to move outside of your lane,” he told Deadline.
He added that the long-running series will mean that he has a nice basis to launch 32 Flavors, so that he doesn’t need to sign an overall deal, which can “come with its own handcuffs”.
Baskin has been shooting the latest season of Vanderpump Rules since June, following the ratings success of season 10, thanks to the scandal that saw Tom Sandoval cheat on his co-star Ariana Madix with co-star Rachel Leviss. He said that it’s a “worthy follow up to last season”.
“The timing of [Scandoval] happened to have been perfect,” he added. “It was insane and proof that there can still be a monoculture. The story of Vanderpump is one of survival more than anything. We were coming off a really tough ninth season and we had the cast firings before the season and there was a low energy season during the pandemic. To the network’s credit, they gave us another run at it and we had a resurgence anyway.”
The show films for about 12 weeks for a season and Baskin said that the cast, which also includes the likes of Lala Kent, Tom Schwartz, James Kennedy, Katie Maloney, Scheana Shay, Ally Lewber and Lisa Vanderpump, is “so game to tell the real story”.
He admitted that they are shooting with Sandoval and Madix and are figuring out the future with Leviss. “There’s one that we’re still figuring out even this deep into production. Otherwise, we’ve been filming with the others and it was a situation that involved the entire group so the aftermath was felt by everyone,” he added.
Reality docuseries are a cyclical beast. The Real Housewives franchise continues to be popular and obviously the Kardashians family are still of interest with their eponymous Hulu show, but it has been tough to break new shows.
“We’re at a point where the buyers are trying to figure out a different version [of these types of shows]. There’s an investment and a commitment in docuseries that is really rare… but your goal can’t just be to have a franchise. There was a period where everyone thought if you could just come up with a title with a colon in then you were ok. But it’s more difficult than that. The lesson from any of these shows is that if you pull in the right personalities that are interesting, in the right context, you can really pull in viewers and not just over the course of the season, but over the course of many,” he added.
Outside of the reality docuseries, Baskin is now focusing on true-crime. He is working on podcast Once Upon A Con with AYR Media, the company behind Queen of the Con and The Murder of Robert Wone.
The series follows David Peter Bloom, a Wall Street whiz kid convicted of securities fraud for defrauding investors of almost $15M, who was arrested on suspicion of 12 counts of grand theft in LA for a scheme run out of Hollywood hipster dive bar Frolic Room that entangled The Hills star Caroline D’Amore.
D’Amore, a childhood friend of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, who founded pasta sauce company Pizza Girl, is narrating the series.
“The fun thing is being at the intersection of pop culture and crime. [D’Amore] was conned by this really prolific con man and she made it her mission to bring him to justice,” he said.
In addition to pitching a docuseries based on the podcast, he is also eyeing scripted opportunities for Once Upon A Con, as well as other projects.
“When I was running Evolution, I had a narrow focus and wanted to do the best that I could do within the world that I was in. Now I view myself, not just as an unscripted producer, but someone charged with content across the board,” he said. “A lot of the conversations that I’ve had so far have been scripted projects that are adjacent to what I do, pop culture, within the kind of settings that are high-end with exclusive groups [of people].”
He is also entering the movie business with Skill House, written and directed by Josh Stolberg, who wrote Spiral: From The Book of Saw. Baskin is producing the movie, which also stars a slew of influencers, with Ryan Kavanaugh. “It’s really fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It was interested to see the process play out, it’s in post right now and then we’ll figure out distribution for it,” he added.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CdCCGqhs87g%3Fversion%3D3%26%23038%3Benablejsapi%3D1%26%23038%3Borigin%3Dhttps%3A
The launch of 32 Flavors comes at a tricky time for the unscripted industry. Non-scripted producers have been struggling with a reduction in orders and there was no boom to come out of the writers or actors strikes.
“Right now, it feels bleak,” admits Baskin. “The challenge is that there’s a difficulty in launching anything new. As a producer and creator, you want to take chance, but there’s the age old push and pull where networks tell you they want to do something but don’t necessarily.”
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