Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
| Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Genre | Game show franchise |
| Created by | David Briggs Mike Whitehill Steven Knight |
| Presented by | Chris Tarrant |
| Theme music composer |
Keith Strachan Matthew Strachan |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30–120 minutes (depending on the version) |
| Production company(s) |
Celador (1998–2007) 2waytraffic (2007–2014) Sony Pictures Television (2008–2014) |
| Distributor | Sony Pictures Television |
| Release | |
| Original release | 4 September 1998 – February 2014 |
| External links | |
| Official UK version website | |
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (sometimes informally known as Millionaire) is an international television game show franchise of British origin, created by David Briggs, Mike Whitehill and Steven Knight. In its format, currently owned and licensed by Sony Pictures Television, large cash prizes are offered for correctly answering a series of multiple-choice questions of increasing (or, in some cases, random) difficulty. The maximum cash prize (in the original British version) was one million pounds. Most international versions offer a top prize of one million units of the local currency; the actual value of the prize varies widely, depending on the value of the currency.
The original British version of the show debuted on 4 September 1998, and aired on ITV with Chris Tarrant as its host until 11 February 2014. International variants have aired in around 160 countries worldwide. The show's format is a twist on the game show genre—only one contestant plays at a time (similar to some radio quizzes), and the emphasis is on suspense rather than speed. In most versions there are no time limits to answer the questions, and contestants are given the question before they must decide whether to attempt an answer.
The contestants must first play a preliminary round, called "Fastest Finger First" (or, in the U.S. version, simply "Fastest Finger"), where they are all given a question and four answers from the host and are asked to put those four answers into a particular order; in the first series of the British version and in pre-2003 episodes of the Australian version, the round instead required the contestants to answer one multiple-choice question correctly as quickly as possible. The contestant who does so correctly and in the fastest time goes on to play the main game for the maximum possible prize (often a million units of the local currency). In the event that two or more contestants are tied for the fastest time, those contestants play another question to break the tie. If no one gets the question right, that question is discarded and another question is played in the same manner. If any contestants are visually impaired, the host reads the question and four choices all at once, then repeats the choices after the music begins.
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