The Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas will be the site of "Survivor" guru Mark Burnett's latest reality series, "The Casino." FOX has ordered 13 episodes of the unscripted drama, which will shoot this spring and air in the summer of 2004.

"We are thrilled to be in business with Mark Burnett," says FOX reality ace Mike Darnell. "He has consistently proven himself to be one of the best producers in the business. We found the concept for this series riveting. Casinos are exciting, fantastic and mysterious -- and incredible human drama unfolds all day, every day. No one has ever had this kind of access, and we think viewers will be amazed by this world."

This project was initially rumored to be Burnett's thematic follow-up to the summer success of NBC's "The Restaurant," but with Rocco DiSpirito on board for a second season of the eatery drama, the projects have branched out separately.

"The Casino" will center on Timothy Poster and Thomas Breitling who became multimillionaires in 2000 when they sold Travelscape.com to Expedia. Poster and Breitling have invested much of their new fortune into purchasing the Golden Nugget with the goal of restoring the casino's retro Rat Pack luster.

"Las Vegas is like a magnet," Burnett says. "The city attracts people from all over the world with two things on their mind -- getting rich quick and having as much fun as possible in a short period of time. It is the magnetism of Las Vegas that we will try to capture on camera, as we tell the story of two young entrepreneurs who found remarkable success during the Internet boom and are now living out their dreams of owning a Las Vegas casino."

As NBC's "Las Vegas" has set out to prove, there are thousands of hotel rooms in the city and every hotel room has a story. With more than 3,000 employees at the Golden Nugget -- including pit bosses, cocktail waitresses, dealers, security experts and entertainers -- there should be plenty of opportunities for romance, in-fighting and endless product placements.

FOX notes that the series' ability to go forward is contingent on final approval of Poster and Breitling's purchase of the Golden Nugget. The deal is still subject to regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other closing conditions.

With the seventh season of "Survivor" coming to a close and an "All-Star Survivor" set to debut in following the Super Bowl in February, Burnett's reality venture, NBC's Donald Trump-centric "The Apprentice," will premiere in January.