What is it? An eviction-night twist that forces the HOH to nominate three houseguests instead of two.
How does it work? The three nominees play a live competition during Thursday’s episode. The winner comes off the block. The remaining two face the house vote.
Why does it matter? It gutted the classic backdoor. An HOH now has to nominate three people they are genuinely willing to see walk out the door.
The BB Blockbuster — introduced in Big Brother 26 as the A.I. Arena — is an eviction-week twist that changes the mechanics of nominations, the Veto and live eviction night. It debuted in Season 26, was rebranded as the BB Blockbuster for Season 27, and has run in every season since.
The Rules and the Weekly Flow
While the Blockbuster is active, the eviction week runs in four steps.
- 1. Nominations. The Head of Household names three houseguests instead of the usual two.
- 2. Power of Veto. The Veto runs as normal. If it’s used to pull a nominee down, the HOH names a replacement — the block has to be back at exactly three going into Thursday.
- 3. The live competition. During Thursday’s live show, immediately before the vote, Julie Chen Moonves reveals a themed competition. All three nominees play it live on television. There are no hidden powers attached — the winner simply comes off the block and is safe for the week.
- 4. The vote. Only the two remaining nominees face the house. The nominees don’t vote, and the HOH votes only to break a tie.
The Death of the Backdoor
The Blockbuster changed Big Brother strategy more than any twist in years, and it did it by gutting the backdoor.
Under the old rules an HOH could pick a target, surround them with safe pawns, and keep the target away from the Veto. Under the Blockbuster, every nominee gets a live shot at saving themselves. Put your real target up beside two harmless pawns and watch the target win the Blockbuster, and your week collapses — the house is now forced to evict one of your own allies.
That has split the house into two kinds of player. Cautious ones start playing scared, avoiding the big move because a physical threat might win the live comp and come back for them next week. Competition beasts have gone the other way — volunteering as pawns, treating the Blockbuster as a safety net, and building a resume while keeping their alliance intact. The players who suffer are the weaker competitors, who now find themselves on the block three weeks running with no comp win to fall back on.
It has also made blowout votes far more common in the early weeks. By the time Thursday’s vote arrives, the house has usually already decided that whoever is left on the block is an acceptable loss.
Big Brother 28 — Blockbuster Results
Week 1 — Do Over. Winner: Yash
HOH Dee nominated Mallory, Taylor and Yash. Mallory won the Veto and saved herself, and Dee named Ashley as the replacement. Yash won the photo-memory Blockbuster, leaving Ashley and Taylor on the block. Ashley was evicted unanimously, 14–0.
Week 2 — Pirate’s Booty. Winner: Jason
Jason pulled himself off the block, leaving Melody and Rome to face the vote. Rome was evicted 12–1.
Week 3 — Video Tape Tumble. Winner: Mallory
Mallory took safety, leaving Jason and LaTrice on the block. Jason was evicted unanimously, 12–0 — one week after saving himself with the Blockbuster.
Week 4 — Paw Patrol Dino Puzzle. Winner: Drew
HOH Haley nominated Drew, Melody and Taylor. Taylor won the Veto and used it on herself; Lyric went up as the replacement. The Toolshed alliance spent the week working a vote-flip to keep Drew and blindside Melody — then Drew won the Blockbuster and took himself off the block anyway. Lyric was evicted 8–3.
Drew has since said on the feeds that he believed he was going home without the Blockbuster win, and credits Taylor with moving votes for him that morning. Both things were happening at once — the flip was real, and the comp made it unnecessary.
Week 5 — Newton’s Apples. Winner: Haley
Lala won the Wall to take HOH and nominated Barrett, Chuk and Haley — Haley was her target all week. Kamu won the Power of Veto and chose not to use it, the first unused Veto of the season, which left his own allies feeling released from their loyalty to him.
The Blockbuster asked the three nominees to roll five apples up a ramp into the flat centre section, then knock them all down the far side with stone balls. Haley got all five placed and cleared first. Haley won, saving herself from the block she’d been the target of all week.
That left Chuk beside Barrett — and Devens, Mallory and Drew had already been quietly building the case that Chuk was the better boot. Chuk was evicted 9–1, with Haley casting the only vote to keep him. He didn’t hug Lala on his way out, telling Julie it was payback for her refusing to shake his hand before the Blockbuster.
Week 6 — Wind Tunnel. Winner: Angela
The week the Blockbuster met a bigger power. Yash won HOH, nominated Angela, Dee and Haley, then won the OTEV Veto himself and left his nominations alone — total control, on paper. Then Devens stopped the ceremony and spent the Diamond Power of Veto he’d been holding since Week 3, pulling Dee off the block and naming Kamu in her place. Yash finished the week with a board he did not build.
The Blockbuster sent Angela, Haley and Kamu into a wind tunnel to collect ten red and ten yellow balls into matching tubes. Angela won it sitting down — a seated strategy while the other two chased balls standing up.
That left Kamu next to Haley, and the house had already agreed where it was going. Kamu was evicted 8–1, with Lala the lone vote to evict Haley instead. Dee won the HOH that followed — her second of the season.
Week 7 — in progress
Dee is Head of Household with eleven houseguests left. Nominations, Veto and the Blockbuster are still to come.
The Toolshed and the Blockbuster
Big Brother 28’s dominant alliance came together in the small hours of July 17, around 4:23am, during Devens’s Week 2 HOH — a merger of the Crossovers and the Red Corner. Drew proposed the name Toolshed and Angela supplied the “drop the hammer” theme. Eight members: Devens, Dee, Angela, Kamu, Chuk, Haley, Drew and Barrett.
An eight-person alliance in a seventeen-person house should be able to control any vote it wants. The Blockbuster is the reason it can’t. Week 4 is the clearest example — the Toolshed had a plan, worked the votes for it, and the plan was overtaken by a competition result before the vote was ever cast.
By Week 6 the alliance had eaten two of its own. Chuk went out in Week 5 after his own allies decided he was the softer target; Kamu followed a week later, put on the block by a Toolshed member using a secret power on another Toolshed member’s behalf. Chuk’s exit interview named it directly — he called the eviction unreal because of how fast the Toolshed fell apart.
Big Brother 27 — The BB Blockbuster
Renamed for Season 27 and run for ten weeks, considerably longer than its debut season.
- Week 1 — Ransom Note. Winner: Kelley
- Week 2 — Puzzling Prints. Winner: Adrian
- Week 3 — Study the Study. Winner: Kelley
- Week 4 — Safe Crackers. Winner: Rylie
- Week 5 — Jumbo Gemstones. Winner: Keanu
- Week 6 — Settle the Score. Winner: Mickey
- Week 7 — Hilltop Heist. Winner: Kelley
- Week 8 — Forensic Frenzy. Winner: Vince
- Week 9 — Key to Safety. Winner: Keanu
- Week 10 — comp name not recorded. Winner: Lauren
Kelley’s three wins are the most by any player in a single season. Week 5’s Jumbo Gemstones is the one people still talk about: Vince and Zach both built their gem stacks from the top down and both stacks failed, while Keanu stopped, rebuilt from the bottom up, and won.
Big Brother 26 — The A.I. Arena
The twist debuted under the A.I. Arena name to match the season’s artificial intelligence theme, and ran for the first seven weeks.
- Week 1 — Glitch in the System. Winner: Kimo
- Week 2 — Security Race. Winner: Tucker
- Week 3 — Data Dump. Winner: Tucker — the first player to win the Arena twice in a row
- Week 4 — Upload, Download. Winner: Makensy
- Week 5 — Digital Decryption. Winner: Chelsie, who took safety in a mental comp and left the house to vote out Brooklyn
- Week 6 — Puzzling Password. Winner: Makensy, her second
- Week 7 — Bandwidth Boosters. Winner: Rubina
Blockbuster Records
- Most wins in a season: Kelley, three (BB27, Weeks 1, 3 and 7).
- First back-to-back winner: Tucker (BB26, Weeks 2 and 3).
- Two-time winners: Tucker and Makensy in BB26; Kelley and Keanu in BB27.
- Shortest gap between saving yourself and going home: Jason in BB28 — won the Week 2 Blockbuster, evicted 12–0 in Week 3.
- Best-timed win: Haley in BB28 Week 5 — the HOH’s stated target all week, saved by the comp, and still in the house.
- Longest run: BB27, ten weeks.
Where to Watch It
The Blockbuster is played on the Thursday live show, in the hour before the vote. That makes Thursday the busiest live hour in the show’s history — a competition, an eviction and a new Head of Household in sixty minutes. The feeds cut away while it’s played, so the Blockbuster is one of the few remaining things feed watchers find out at the same time as everyone else.