Confirming several weeks of rumors, CBS has announced that next fall's thirteenth installment of its Survivor franchise will take place in the Cook Islands and be titled Survivor: Cook Islands.
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The network made the announcement at the conclusion of Survivor' edition to film in Cook Islands">last night's Survivor: Panama finale, with Survivor host Jeff Probst presenting a Survivor: Cook Islands preview that stated the Exile Island concept -- first introduced in this season's Panama edition -- will return as part of this coming fall's edition.
"This fall, Survivor voyages to an isolated group of islands named after the famous English explorer Captain James Cook," Probst teased in the preview. "It was the Cook Islands that played host to Captain William Bligh, just days before the infamous mutiny on the Bounty. Now the new survivors will have their own adventures in this lush and exotic land and Exile Island will return with new twists."
A small island chain located about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand and populated by fewer than 22,000 residents, the Cook Islands are located in the same general South Pacific region as the Marquesas and Vanuatu, the sites of Survivor's fourth and ninth editions.
The Cook Islands are also no stranger to Survivor productions -- while CBS's American edition of the show has never previously filmed on the chain, several foreign editions of the show have, including the most recent edition of the United Kingdom's Survivor series.