Jun 22, 2026
“Hot Ones,” where celebrities are interviewed while eating 10 chicken wings that get increasingly spicy, has been YouTube’s hottest show for about a decade. In 2017, I actually spoke to the show’s host Sean Evans about the show’s massive success — and it’s only gotten bigger since then. Well, Netflix wants a bite of the action. On Monday, the streaming giant said it ordered a spinoff of "Hot Ones," called “Hot Ones: Extra Heat.” The first episode will premiere on July 13, immediately after Netflix live-streams the MLB Home Run Derby.
The twist, as I teased in the headline, is that Evans leaving his signature black-curtain studio for bigger venues, which will also come with bigger budgets and more spectacle. The pilot episode takes place at a college baseball stadium, with Will Ferrell, Fortune Feimster and Jimmy Tatro chewing through the wings to promote their Netflix golf comedy "The Hawk." Evans and the team at First We Feast will keep releasing weekly episodes of the flagship series on YouTube, and the original Hot Ones format — which BuzzFeed sold for $82.5 million in late 2024 to a group including Evans and Soros Fund Management — stays put.
The deal is the latest skirmish in Netflix's escalating fight with YouTube, which has been the most-watched distributor on U.S. television screens for nearly a year running, per Nielsen, with Netflix the largest subscription streamer behind it. To close the gap, Netflix has been raiding YouTube's talent pool — signing creators like Miss Rachel and Mark Rober and licensing more than 30 video podcasts, including "The Bill Simmons Podcast" and "The Breakfast Club."
With "Extra Heat," Netflix gets one of the biggest names in digital interviews without pulling him off the platform that made him — and that’s the appeal to Evans. "They're the two biggest streamers by far," he told The New York Times, regarding Netflix and YouTube. "It's an amazing thing to be in both lanes."
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Dave Smith is the VP of Content at Wise Publishing and Editor-in-Chief at Moneywise and Money.ca. His work has also been published in Fortune, Business Insider, Newsweek, ABC News, and USA Today.
