Extreme Heat Netflix The Hollywood Reporter
Hunter March has signed on to host the fourth season of Netflix’s Blown Away, the red-hot glassblowing competition series.
March on Blown Away: Extreme Heat will have the job of bringing audiences to the alluring world of glassblowing after earlier hosting Netflix’s Sugar Rush, which had teams of master bakers racing against the clock to create unique sugary confections.
He tells The Hollywood Reporter that corralling 10 contestants on the fiery Blown Away: Extreme Heat set — with 10 ovens heated to 2,000 degrees each as work stations — had March endlessly fascinated as artists create brilliant yet fragile objects from hot, gooey molten glass.
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“You kind of grasp how hot something needs to be, or how heavy something may look. But to really be turning it in your hand to keep the glass steady, to be blowing into that pipe and watching a bubble form, it’s an experience unlike anything I’ve ever done,” March, an avid painter, explains after trying his hand at glassblowing sculpture.
That’s after he got comfortable around competitors inflating molten glass at the end of a blow pipe on the giant set for Blown Away: Extreme Heat. “The first day, I was absolutely terrified that everyone walking around with 2,000 degree glass was going to joust me to the ground with it,” he recounts.
The fourth season of Blown Away is once again set in a giant hot shop built in a Hamilton, Ontario warehouse, where March came to appreciate the strength, speed and mental toughness of contestants looking succeed on a unique TV competition series.
“Besides the imagination and creativity that goes into each piece, the actual physical endurance they need to be in that hot shop for five hours, the tenacity to make it through 10 grueling challenges, it was incredible to watch,” he says.
Of course, for March, getting glassblowers to create something elaborate, but to do so quickly with the clock ticking down — and with the threat of being the one losing contender to go home each episode, leaving one eventual champion to be crowned “Best in Glass” — was a challenge in and of itself.
“Rushing art is definitely not the way most artists work best. But that’s what makes this competition so incredible. You have artists used to working under timelines or guidelines. And this competition expedites all that,” he adds.
Marblemedia was rewarded for the success of the earlier three seasons of Blown Away as Netflix teamed up yet again with the Canadian indie producer to shake up the bar and spirits worlds with Drink Masters, a reality series that has competing mixologists infuse and blend their liquid art to create fresh takes on storied cocktails.
As with Blown Away and its focus on the craft and wonder of glassblowing, Marblemedia produced with Drink Masters a less in-your-face TV reality series and one more focused on the tactile adventure of making cocktails. And the competition took place on a giant, elaborate set that lends cinematic scope to the series.
At the same time, Matt Hornburg co-CEO and executive producer at Marblemedia, tells THR that getting Netflix to order a fourth season of Blown Away: Extreme Heat called for cranking up the dramatic stakes even higher. “Everything’s going to just feel a bit more dialed up, which is kind of exciting, new and fresh,” he explains.
Besides changing it up with hosting duties, the Blown Away producers have fired up the challenges the glassblowers will face in difficulty and intensity and doubled down on the individual human drama found with each competitor.
“We want to see their talent, their artistry and, at the same time, part of the magic is really getting to know their stories and their passion and what motivates them and their families, and why they got into the glassblowing industry,” Mark Bishop, co-CEO and executive producer at Marblemedia, adds.
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