MAIN Pop Culture Reality TV Punk'd

MTV has announced the ultimate Punk'd sneak preview. Starting at 1 p.m. April 7 they'll be running the whole upcoming season — all eight episodes of Punk'd — ahead of its regular primetime slot.

The final season will premiere at 9 PM on April 10. As a tribute to the final season, Ashton Kutcher will host a special Punk'd Awards honoring all eight seasons at 9 p.m. June 5.

Playing pranks and joking with friends has always been a good way to generate some fun in the family, at school and at work. As long as the jokes are not meant to be mean, everyone, including the one getting pranked, usually gets a good laugh out of the stunt.

Executive producer Ashton Kutcher took that basic idea to new levels with his brilliant reality TV show, Punk'd.

Take MTV's openness to outside the box programming, a big budget, an endless stream of celebrity victims and their also famous friends and mix in few creative minds planning elaborate hoaxes and you have Punk'd... a modern version of Candid Camera with star power.

The show was such a hit that after the second season in December 2003, Kutcher announced the end of the show. Why? Speculation is that stars were getting wise to the pranks. With the show ending, the celebs were less suspicious. Sure enough, April 2004 saw another season of Punk'd.

An Icelandic version of the show, Tekinn, hosted by Auðunn Blöndal, premiered on channel Sirkus in fall 2006.

Along with Ashton Kutcher the other executive producer of this reality TV series is Jason Goldberg.

The 2007 season of Punk'd will include pranks on Hilary Swank, Magic Johnson, Evangeline Lilly and Nelly Furtado. The series will end after these shows.

Both producers are now involved with the new reality TV show, The Real Wedding Crashers. That probably means that, unlike the 2003 end of the show, this time it will really be over.

Stay tuned...

Punk'd - MTV - Spend hours reliving or catching the clips you missed the first time...your favorite celebs getting punk'd by Ashton & the crew with a little help from their friends...Punk'd - MTV Videos

Punk'd - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - The wiki coverage of the wacky show includes great stuff like Punk'd pranks that failed, lists of celebrities and plenty of other trivia...

IMDb - Punk'd (2003- ????) - Another site with good info on past pranks, cast members and a comments section.

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