Deal or No Deal Island

Deal or No Deal Island is an American reality competition series which premiered on NBC on February 26, 2024.

A spin-off of the game show Deal or No Deal, the series features contestants competing in physical challenges in an island setting to retrieve briefcases containing cash values. The winner of the challenge selects a contestant to play the "Banker's Challenge"—a game of Deal or No Deal where they must aim to make a "good" offer on their chosen briefcase to avoid elimination. The last contestant remaining plays a high-stakes game of Deal or No Deal, with the largest prize being a jackpot formed from the total value of the offers received throughout the season.

Format
Deal or No Deal Island is a reality game show in which a group of contestants compete in excursions to collect briefcases hidden across the Banker's private island, an undisclosed island in the Panama islands.

Excursions
Each episode, the contestants compete in Excursions and must undertake physical challenges to retrieve briefcases with varying cash values. Certain challenges may include "red cases," which either permit a contestant to seize another player’s briefcase or contain a minimal cash amount. Contestants securing the lowest-valued briefcases are deemed at risk and may be selected to face the Banker's Challenge. The contestant or team gathering the highest combined case value gains immunity for that evening and determines which lower-ranking contestant will confront the Banker.

Banker's Challenge
The Banker's Challenge is a conventional high-stakes game of Deal or No Deal between the Banker and the player chosen to compete by the winner of the Excursion. The player goes head to head in a series of rounds, each round opening one or more cases and revealing their values. At the end of each round, the Banker presents the player with an offer. The player must decide whether to accept the Banker's offer or keep their case. If the player accepts an offer worth more than what's in their case, they are safe and must eliminate one of their fellow contestants. If they accept an offer worth less than their case value, they are eliminated. At the end of the Banker's Challenge, the value of the accepted deal or contestant's case (if final deal is rejected) is added to the total final case value. During the Banker's Challenge, if the player gets a record breaking offer from the Banker, he may choose to sweeten the deal by offering the player a personal deal, typically a cash prize that the player will receive regardless of the outcome of the game. In some cases, if the player accepts the deal, they must agree to leave the game immediately.

Final game
The last contestant remaining plays a conventional game of Deal or No Deal with 22 cases to determine their prize, but this time with the Banker, now revealed to be Howie Mandel, the original host of Deal or No Deal, present in person. The top half of the board consists entirely of cases containing $1 million or more, including the largest cases found during each Excursion. The highest valued case was the total amount won in each of the previous Banker's Challenges, which in season 1 resulted in a top case valued at nearly $14,000,000.

Production
On May 12, 2023, NBC ordered the series. On September 27, 2023, it was announced that Joe Manganiello would host the show. On November 20, 2023, it was announced that the series will premiere on February 20, 2024. On January 8, 2024, the contestants were announced. On May 7, 2024, the series was renewed for a second season.

In the first season finale, Howie Mandel appeared as the Banker.

Contestants
The cast of 13 contestants includes familiar faces such as former Deal or No Deal case model Claudia Jordan and former five-time Survivor contestant and two-time The Amazing Race contestant Rob Mariano.

Elimination chart
Color key: • {{legend|#73FB76|Overall Winner}}

• {{legend|green|Excursion Winner}}

• {{legend|wheat|Bottom Player}}

• {{legend|yellow|Banker's Challenger}}

• {{legend|tomato|Bad Deal}}

• {{legend|maroon|Eliminated}}

Cheating

 * In the first part of the two-part finale of Season 1, Episode 11 (S1E11 ), the final four contestants were challenged to navigate through the Banker's Garden, a jungle maze, to locate and retrieve briefcases of undisclosed value. The task commenced with a riddle-solving challenge that would grant access to a map pinpointing the briefcases' locations. Amy solved the riddle first and entered the maze. Subsequently, Rob violated the game's rules by looking at Amy's game board for the riddle's solution. This infraction prompted an immediate intervention by host Joe Manganiello, who paused the game to address the breach. Despite the violation, Rob was permitted to continue participating in the challenge but was assessed a time penalty determined by the duration of time between Amy and the next finisher entering the maze, which was ultimately three minutes. This penalty required him to wait until all other contestants had started their maze excursions before his penalty timer commenced.

Critical response
Writing for The Daily Beast, Fletcher Peters argued that Deal or No Deal Island was a "dreamlike, messy, absurdist concept" that sounded like a "title ripped from 30 Rock", and that she would have preferred another straight reboot of the original show, but that it was a "welcome twist on the original romp" and was "easy" to watch.

Andy Dehnart was more critical, considering it "an awkward marriage of two different formats" that "tip[ped] way too much toward Deal or No Deal for my taste", panning the length of the Banker's Challenge segments (albeit admitting that he was not as much of a fan of Deal or No Deal to begin with due to its pacing), and the quality of its editing.