Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (WWTBAM) 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, contestants tackle a series of multiple-choice questions to win large cash prizes in a format that twists on many game show genre conventions – only one contestant plays at a time. Similar to radio quizzes, contestants are given the question before deciding whether to answer and have no time limit to answer questions. The cash prize increases as they tackle questions that become increasingly difficult, with the maximum offered in most variants of the format being an aspirational value in the respective local currency, such as £1 million in the British version, €1 million in most European versions, $1 million in the American version and ₹70 million (₹7 crore) in the Indian version. The original British version debuted on 4 September 1998 on the ITV network, hosted by Chris Tarrant, and ran until 11 February 2014. A revived series of seven episodes to commemorate its 20th anniversary aired in May 2018, hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, and ITV renewed the show for several more series. Since its debut, international variants of the show have been aired in around 100 countries, making it the best-selling TV format in television history, and is credited by some as paving the way for the boom in the popularity of reality television.