The Girls Next Door | |
---|---|
Also known as | The Girls of the Playboy Mansion |
Created by | Kevin Burns Hugh Hefner |
Starring | Hugh Hefner Holly Madison (2005–09) Bridget Marquardt (2005–09) Kendra Wilkinson (2005–09) Crystal Harris (2009) Kristina Shannon (2009) Karissa Shannon (2009) |
Opening theme | "Come on-a My House" (remix) |
Ending theme | "Come on-a My House" (remix) |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 6 |
No. of episodes | 91 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Production companies | Fox Television Studios Alta Loma Entertainment Prometheus Entertainment |
Original release | |
Network | E! |
Release | August 7, 2005 – August 8, 2010 |
Related | |
Kendra Holly's World The Girls Next Door: The Bunny House Bridget's Sexiest Beaches Kendra on Top |
The Girls Next Door (also known as The Girls of the Playboy Mansion) is a reality television series which focuses on the lives of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends who live with him at the Playboy Mansion. The series was created by executive producer Kevin Burns and Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine. The series premiered on the E! cable network on August 7, 2005 and ran for 6 seasons. The first five seasons centered around then-girlfriends, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson. The sixth and final season premiered on October 11, 2009 and introduced Hefner's new girlfriends, Crystal Harris, who eventually went on to marry Hefner, and twins Kristina and Karissa Shannon.
The success of the series was followed by several spin-offs, including Kendra and Holly's World .
The series focuses on the lives of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends who live with him at the legendary Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. Hefner was often on the show along with various Playmates and other celebrities. The series not only showcases events at the mansion (e.g. Fight Night, Fourth of July celebration, the midsummer celebration), but also sheds light on other Playboy related events such as the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, Playmate test shoots at Playboy Studio West, Operation Playmate, birthday parties, and more significantly, the personalities and real lives of each of his girlfriends.
Kevin Burns approached Hefner in early 2005, which resulted in a pilot called "Hef's World" being filmed. This followed "Hef, his girlfriends, and friends contrasted with the staff". When presented to E!, they told him to go back and interview each of the girlfriends to "see what you can get", which resulted in the premise shifting from Hefner to life in the mansion from a woman's perspective. [1]
The first five seasons centered around then-girlfriends, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson.
In October [2] 2008, Hefner's relationships with Madison ended [3] for unconfirmed reasons (though the final episode of the fifth season discusses her unhappiness at the mansion in not being able to get married or have a family with Hefner) and Wilkinson left to continue her new relationship with football player Hank Baskett. Marquardt also temporarily left at the same time to film Bridget's Sexiest Beaches for The Travel Channel, but in January 2009 [2] ended her relationship with Hefner and moved out of the mansion permanently.
Despite the end of Hefner's relationship with Madison, Marquardt and Wilkinson, all three were contractually committed to a sixth season. [3] Madison indicated to Life & Style magazine, the manner in which their contractual obligations would be fulfilled was still unknown at the time, but that they were still filming material together. [4] [5] However, the focus of the show shifted to Hefner's new girlfriends, 23-year-old Crystal Harris, [6] and 19-year-old twins Kristina and Karissa Shannon. The sixth season was also originally set to feature Anna Sophia Berglund and Melissa Taylor as Hefner's second and third girlfriends, with the Shannon twins relegated to fourth and fifth position – according to a post by the company responsible for the show's opening sequence, that shows an incomplete rough cut of the new intro for the show. [7]
Madison did appear in the first two episodes of the season, and also appeared with Marquardt and Wilkinson in the episode "The Showering Inferno", which focused more on them than Harris and the twins.
The Girls Next Door was an instant hit for E! and quickly had its first season expanded from eight to fifteen episodes. The second season premiere was watched by 1.6 million viewers (which set a 3-year record) and then topped itself by having 2.16 million viewers for the third season premiere – the second highest season premiere ever on the E! network. [8]
The initial success of the show was so great that Playboy published a nude pictorial of Madison, Marquardt and Wilkinson on the November 2005 issue. This later led to two more pictorials in September 2006 (to celebrate the premiere of the second season) and March 2008 (celebrating them being voted fourth in Playboy's annual "Sexiest Celebrities" online poll).
The final episode starring Madison, Marquardt and Wilkinson was watched by 2.535 million [9] viewers.
Despite starting with the highest rating season premiere in the series' history, [10] the sixth season saw ratings drop from 2.4 million [10] watching the premiere, to only 960,000 [11] watching the fourth episode only three weeks later. Ratings then dropped even further to 919,000 viewers only five weeks after the premiere. [12]
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the first five seasons on DVD in Region 1 between 2006 and 2009. These releases have been discontinued and are now out-of-print.
In March 2011, it was announced that MPI Home Video had acquired the rights to the series. [13] They subsequently released season 6 on DVD in July 19, 2011. They also re-released the first five seasons on the same day.
On November 29, 2011, MPI Home Video released The Girls Next Door: Complete Collection on DVD in Region 1. [14] The 17-disc set features all 91 episodes of the series as well as many bonus features.
In 2008, Burns approached Wilkinson and offered her a series of her own. [15] She later accepted and the series premiered on June 7, 2009. [16] The series was a hit for E!, averaging 2.6 million [17] viewers in its first season and setting many records – including being the highest-rated premiere since 2002. [18]
In 2009, Burns revealed he was in talks to create two new series, one for Madison and one for Marquardt. [15]
In 2010, a backdoor pilot [25] focusing on the Playmate House, titled The Girls Next Door: The Bunny House , aired on August 8, 2010, [26] but the series was not picked up.
In 2011, Holly's World was initially given a third season that was due to begin filming in September, [27] however it was later confirmed the season had been canceled before the production had begun and that the series would not be returning. [28] The cancellation came about in July when then-new E! president Bonnie Hammer vowed to "get rid of the more Playboy trashy element" from the network [29] – a goal that was ultimately achieved as Kendra was also canceled in 2012.
In 2012, a new series titled Kendra on Top that would premiere on WE tv in the summer of 2012 was announced as a follow-up to Kendra. [30] As with all other spin-offs, this show is also produced by Burns and his production company Prometheus Entertainment.
Hugh Marston Hefner was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles. Hefner extended the Playboy brand into a world network of Playboy Clubs. He also resided in luxury mansions where Playboy Playmates shared his wild partying life, fueling media interest.
Lindsey Eve (Vuolo) Handrinos is an American glamor model and actress best known for her appearance in Playboy as the November 2001 Playmate of the Month. She has appeared in a number of Playboy Special Editions, and in Playboy videos. She also appeared on TV shows such as The Girls Next Door and The Celebrity Apprentice.
Victoria Alynette Fuller is an American glamour model, artist, actress and reality TV performer.
Barbi Benton is an American former model, actress, television personality, and singer. She appeared in Playboy magazine, as a regular on the comedy series Hee Haw, and recorded several moderately successful albums in the 1970s. After the birth of her first child in 1986, Benton retired from show business.
Holly Madison is an American television personality, best known as a former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner and for her appearance in the reality television show The Girls Next Door. She also starred in her own reality series, Holly's World, which ran from 2009 to 2011. She has released two books, Down the Rabbit Hole in 2015, about her life in the Playboy Mansion and her relationship with Hefner, and The Vegas Diaries: Romance, Rolling the Dice, and the Road to Reinvention in 2016.
Bridget Marquardt is an American television personality known for her role in the reality TV series The Girls Next Door, which depicted her life as one of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's girlfriends. Although not a Playboy Playmate, Marquardt has appeared in nude pictorials with her Girls Next Door co-stars and fellow Hefner girlfriends Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson.
Sara Jean Underwood is an American model, television host and actress who was chosen as the Playmate of the Month for the July 2006 issue of Playboy magazine and later became Playmate of the Year in 2007. She is a former host of Attack of the Show! on G4.
Sondra Theodore is an American model and actress. She was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for its July 1977 issue. Her centerfold was photographed by Ken Marcus. Her Playmate pictorial was the first to include the Data Sheets that Playmates had been filling out since 1959.
Kendra Leigh Wilkinson is an American television personality and real estate agent. She first gained recognition as one of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends and for her role on the E! reality television series The Girls Next Door (2005–2009), on which her life in the Playboy Mansion was documented. Although not a Playboy Playmate, she has appeared in three nude pictorials with her Girls Next Door co-stars Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt. She subsequently starred in her own reality shows, Kendra (2009–2011) and Kendra on Top (2012–2017).
The House Bunny is a 2008 American comedy film directed by Fred Wolf written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, and produced by Adam Sandler, Jack Giarraputo, Anna Faris, Allen Covert, and Heather Parry. The film stars Faris, Colin Hanks, and Emma Stone, and tells the story of a former Playboy bunny who signs up to be the "house mother" of an unpopular university sorority after finding out she must leave the Playboy Mansion.
Kristina and Karissa Shannon are American Playboy Playmates, porn stars and twin sisters.
Miss March is a 2009 American sex comedy film written, starring, and directed by Trevor Moore and Zach Cregger, stars of the IFC show The Whitest Kids U' Know. The film was released on March 13, 2009. It marks the final on-screen film appearance of Hugh Hefner before his death in 2017. It is also the first of only three films directed by Trevor Moore before his death in 2021, the second being "The Civil War On Drugs" which was aired in segments in the final season of The Whitest Kids U' Know in 2011, and the third being the animated comedy “Mars” which is set to be released posthumously.
The Telling is a 2009 horror film starring Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt from the E! television series The Girls Next Door. The film is also the producing debut of Bridget Marquardt, who teamed up with veteran producer Chuck Williams. It is directed by Jeff Burr and first time director Nicholas Carpenter, grandson of filmmaker Hal Roach.
Crystal Hefner is an American model who was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for December 2009, and the third wife of Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner from December 2012 until his death in September 2017.
Kendra is an American reality television series that debuted on the E! cable network, on June 7, 2009. The program is the first spin-off of The Girls Next Door, and documents the life of model Kendra Baskett, a former girlfriend of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, after moving out of the Playboy Mansion, including her engagement and marriage to football player Hank Baskett and her adjustment to being a first-time mother.
The Girls Next Door: The Bunny House is a failed backdoor pilot for a potential third spin-off of The Girls Next Door, which aired on August 8, 2010.
Mark Frazier is an American born artist, painter, body painter and photographer. His work has been seen in film, television, private collections and print.
Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny is a New York Times bestselling memoir by ex-Playboy Bunny Holly Madison. Madison's debut tell-all features her early life and her infamous adventures as the former main girlfriend of Hugh Hefner and star of the television show The Girls Next Door.