Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (often informally called Millionaire) is an international television game show franchise of British origin, created by David Briggs, Mike Whitehill and Steven Knight. In its format, currently owned and licensed by Sony Pictures Television, contestants tackle a series of multiple-choice questions to win large cash prizes in a format that twists on many game show genre conventions – only one contestant plays at a time, similar to radio quizzes; contestants are given the question before deciding whether to answer, and have no time limit to answer questions; and the amount offered increases as they tackle questions that become increasingly difficult. The maximum cash prize offered in most versions of the format is an aspirational value in local currency, such as one million pounds in the U.K. or 75 million rupees (7.5 crore) in India. The original British version debuted on 4 September 1998 on the ITV network, hosted by Chris Tarrant, who presented his final episode on 11 February 2014 after which the show was discontinued. A revived series of seven episodes to commemorate its 20th anniversary aired from 5 to 11 May 2018, hosted by Jeremy Clarkson. The revival received mostly positive reviews from critics and fans, as well as high viewing figures, leading ITV to renew the show for several more series. Since its debut, international variants of the game show have been aired in around 160 countries. History The format of the show was created by David Briggs, Mike Whitehill and Steven Knight, who had earlier created a number of the promotional games for Tarrant's morning show on Capital FM radio, such as the bong game. Tentatively known as Cash Mountain, the show took its finalised title from a song written by Cole Porter for the 1956 film High Society, starring Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm. Since the original version launched, several individuals have claimed that they originated the format and that Celador had breached their copyright. While many pursued litigation, they were all unsuccessful, and each claim was later settled out-of-court on an agreement/settlement. In March 2006, original producer Celador announced that it was seeking to sell the worldwide rights to Millionaire, together with the rest of its British programme library, as the first phase of a sell-off of the company's format and production divisions. British television producer Paul Smith first had the idea to franchise the UK programme internationally.