Netflix is under added pressure to bring in new subscribers, and the streamer must think Is It Cake? will help. The streamer renewed the show, inspired by a meme that went viral during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, for a second season. The new episodes will be hosted by Saturday Night Live star Mikey Day, who hosted Season 1.
Is It Cake? features some of the best cake artists in the country competing to create the most ornate cakes that look more like everyday objects or even other food. Each episode features three contestants who get eight hours to craft a cake that looks like another object to trick celebrity judges. The winner of each episode takes home $5,000. Three winners were selected to compete in the finale for $50,000. All eight episodes of Season 1 were released on March 18.
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Day will serve as host and a new group of celebrity judges will join him. Each Season 1 episode included three different celebrity guests. Fortune Feimster, Camille Kostek, Rebecca Black, King Princess, Heidi Garner, Loni Love, Bobby Moynihan, and Karamo Brown were some of the Season 1 guests.
Is It Cake? was a huge hit for Netflix, holding a spot in the global Top 10 English TV chart for four weeks and was in the Top 10 TV chart for 75 counties. The show is produced by Alfred Street Industries, with Dan Cutforth, Jane Lipsitz, Nan Strait, Dan Volpe, and Andrew Wallace as executive producers.
Is It Cake? is inspired by a crazy meme in 2020. During the pandemic, videos showing expertly-crafted cakes made to look like other things went viral. In the game show, chefs made cakes that looked like hamburgers, tacos, bags of money, rubber ducks, toy dinosaurs, and other surprising objects.
It’s no surprise that Is It Cake? earned a second season even as Netflix seeks ways to cut costs amid its subscriber drop. Is It Cake? is a cheap show to produce and comes from an outside studio. During the first quarter of 2022, Netflix reported losing 200,000 subscribers and the company is predicting another loss of 2 million subscribers in the second quarter.
Earlier this week, sources told The Hollywood Reporter that Netflix is rethinking how it greenlights projects, particularly in its film division. There may still be an occasional big movie, like the upcoming Gray Man with Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans and Knives Out 2 with Daniel Craig, but there could be fewer of them. Netflix is also unlikely to approve of “expensive vanity projects” for respected filmmakers, like Martin Scorsese’s $175 million The Irishman. “This tendency to do anything to attract talent and giving them carte blanche is going away,” one source told THR. Gray Man, which cost $200 million to make, hits Netflix on July 22, a week after a limited theatrical run.
