‘You Bet Your Life’: The Secret Word Is ‘Cosby’ : Television: The comedy kingpin will star in a new version of the 1950s Groucho Marx quiz show next year. ‘Cosby Show’ might live on too.

Bill Cosby will produce and star in a new weeknight version of Groucho Marx’s 1950s quiz show “You Bet Your Life,” beginning in the fall of 1992.

Although Cosby has stated that the coming season of his popular NBC sitcom, “The Cosby Show,” will be his last, Norman Brokaw, chairman of the William Morris Agency and Cosby’s agent for 30 years, said Friday that the new project will not preclude Cosby’s return for the 1992-93 season if he changes his mind.

An NBC spokeswoman confirmed that Cosby has said that the 1991-92 season, his eighth, will be his last. A renewal would have to be negotiated with Cosby and the Carsey-Werner Co., which produces “The Cosby Show” and will produce the new quiz show too.

While “Cosby” has been one of the most popular television shows of all time and though it continued to win its Thursday night time period against “The Simpsons” last season, its ratings fell significantly.

Brokaw noted that Cosby has said in the past that he probably would not return for another year of “The Cosby Show” and then changed his mind. With that possibility in mind, he said that the new version of “You Bet Your Life” would be structured so that Cosby could tape five shows in one day and still have the rest of the week for his role as Cliff Huxtable.

The new “You Bet Your Life” will be syndicated as a five-night-a-week series, intended for the key 6-8 p.m. period, said Tom Werner, a principal in the Carsey-Werner Co. He said that while the game-show format, similar to the one Groucho Marx used, will serve as the show’s spine, the program’s strength and comedy will be derived from Cosby’s talking with the contestants.

“I am very excited about this project,” Cosby said in a prepared statement. “I always have people on stage when I do my own show and I’m looking forward to having a good time.”

The show was born when Werner called Brokaw and asked him what he thought of Cosby’s starring in a Monday-through-Friday show. Without knowing what he had in mind, Brokaw said, he told Werner that if the program had the “feel” of “You Bet Your Life,” then Cosby definitely would be interested. The agent explained that Marx and Buster Keaton have always been Cosby’s two favorite comic talents.

At the time, Carsey-Werner was negotiating to purchase the rights to “You Bet Your Life” from NBC, which it secured last month, Werner said.

Carsey-Werner, which also produces “A Different World” and “Roseanne,” will syndicate the show itself. In the past, it has functioned solely as a production company and has contracted with Viacom to syndicate its hit sitcoms.

“We thought we could do the best job for it,” Werner said. “We really care about the show and we just don’t want it to be just another offering at some other (syndication) company.”