NBC develops Wordle game show with Savannah Guthrie hosting, Fallon producing

A six-guess puzzle built around one shared daily word has become valuable enough for NBC to test on television, a sign that Wordle is no longer just a digital diversion but a franchise asset. The bigger question is whether a game designed for a quick, solitary ritual can survive the leap to broadcast without losing the very simplicity that made it sticky.

NBC is developing the project as a pilot, not a straight-to-series order, with Savannah Guthrie set to host. The show is being filmed in the United Kingdom and is being produced with Universal Television Alternative Studio and The New York Times, while Jimmy Fallon is involved through his Electric Hot Dog banner. The network is treating the format as a controlled experiment, one that could turn a minimalist word game into a repeatable television property.

The source material for the show has already proven unusually durable. Wordle was created in 2021 by Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle and sold to The New York Times in January 2022 for an undisclosed seven-figure price. The game asks players to solve a five-letter word in six attempts, using colored tiles to show which letters are correct and which are in the right place. Its once-a-day release means every player around the world is working on the same puzzle, at the same time, a constraint that helped make it part of a shared routine.

That routine has been a major business win for The New York Times. The company reported 5.3 billion Wordle plays in 2024, up from 4.8 billion in 2023. Axios reported that The New York Times’ puzzles and games were played more than 8 billion times in 2023, with Wordle leading the way. Those numbers explain why the paper explored a television version and chose to work with Fallon for a broadcast adaptation.

Fallon has been openly attached to the game for years. He has said he is addicted to Wordle and played it on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, including a January 2022 segment with Questlove. His NBC relationship also gives the project an internal boost: Fallon renewed his Tonight Show deal through 2028 and already fronts or produces other NBC games and competition shows, including Password, That’s My Jam and On Brand.

Guthrie brings a different kind of value. As a co-host of Today for more than a decade, she is one of NBC’s most familiar faces and gives the network a host with broad recognition beyond late-night. For NBC, the pitch is straightforward: take a globally familiar puzzle, attach a trusted host and a proven producer, and see whether a daily habit can become appointment television without losing the logic that made it work in the first place.