CORRIEDALE’S future has been laid bare by an ITV boss – who sensationally compared the long-running soap to Squid Game.
The TV chief has revealed the future of another Corriedale crossover after Coronation Street and Emmerdale collided on screen – quite literally.
Opening up about the ambitious stunt that brought the two soaps together, the ITV boss has revealed whether there could be more dramatic crossovers to come.
Boss Iain MacLeod has now ruled out the possibility of another special crossover episode.
Despite the buzz surrounding the dramatic collision, he insisted there are no current plans to repeat the stunt anytime soon.
Talking about another crossover, Iain said another one “wouldn’t make sense”.
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He told This Is Media City podcast: “The two shows do have a very different editorial voice and different sensibilities and the type of stories they tell are different.
“We had to tiptoe quite carefully through the minefield of blending it together and making sure it didn’t feel like some horrible Frankenstein’s monster of two desperate halves.
“It just wouldn’t work to do it long-term.”
He explained Emmerdale is “gothic and crazy,” whereas Coronation Street is “more grounded”.
He added: “And also, if you’ve got two incredibly successful brands, why would you blend them together?
“I don’t know that it would end up being more than the sum of its parts if you did it long-term.
“It doesn’t make any sense from my point of view to do it more permanently.”
He continued that another crossover won’t generate “the same level of excitement”.
Corriedale brought in a peak of 4.7 million viewers, which saw Debbie Webster and Ronnie Bailey’s wedding end in disaster.
The big day took a horrifying turn when multiple cars were involved in a pile-up.
Fans were left stunned when Billy Mayhew died after Theo Silverton strapped himself in instead of rescuing him from the overturned van before it blew up.
Since then, Coronation Street has gone down to half an hour on weekdays to create a soap hour with Emmerdale.
ITV has changed the schedule to suit viewers’ screen habits and opting for streaming services.
The soaps have updated their cameras and post-production infrastructure to compete with streaming services like Netflix.
Iain added: “What we don’t want is to be left behind. If your mum’s now watching Squid Game on Netflix, you don’t want those viewers to turn on Corrie or turn on Emmerdale and it looks like a completely different century – or genre, even.
“We want to evolve our look so it retains some of the cinematic flavours that we saw in Corriedale recently.”