Survivor's Jeff Probst Details 'Painfully Difficult' Task Of Casting Season 50 Returnees: 'There's Blood Everywhere!' — Watch

In next year's Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans, you are going to decide certain elements of how the game will be played! But what fans won't be deciding is its returning cast, and with over 700 players to choose from, host Jeff Probst is getting real about the "brutal" task ahead for the show's producers. After all, how do you select just 20 dynamic players out of a sea of hundreds?

"I am open to ideas!" Probst told TVLine in our in-studio interview above. "We had about 200 [to start] and we said, 'OK, these are all interesting names' and you can make a different case for each of them. Then we got it down to 100. That first cut was brutal! Then we got it down to 70 and now there's blood everywhere! So, I am not gonna lie and tell you we know who's going to be on the show right now because we don't. It was extremely exciting and painfully difficult to do because there are going to be people disappointed all over the place, but there's going to be a lot of people very excited to be the representative of our 50th season."

Fan voting for the big anniversary season began Wednesday night, jump-starting a process that will allow viewers to vote on aspects like rice, idols, the Final 4 fire-making challenge and much more. But relinquishing that much creative control, Probst admits, has been "a little terrifying."

"It is still, even in this moment, a little terrifying because we're used to designing the game," he says. "There's symmetry, there's a payoff, we know what's going to be in the game... But this is going to truly be an experiment and I think it is the next evolution which is, 'Let's give the fans an array of choices and let's see what they choose, and see what game we end up with!'"

In our interview above, Probst breaks down the genesis of the Season 50 theme, and reflects on the show's 25-year legacy. We also chat about the highly debated fire-making challenge, and I tell him exactly where my vote will be going (#JusticeForChrissy!).

Watch the full interview by pressing PLAY above, then hit the comments with your thoughts!