‘The Bachelor’ Scores A Spinoff Show For 2018: What’s The Scoop?
Just as people are preparing for Rachel Lindsay’s season of The Bachelorette, bracing themselves for the spring finale of Dancing with the Stars, and absorbing the disappointing news regarding the Bachelor split between Ben Higgins and Lauren Bushnell, there comes some exciting news from ABC about spinoff shows for both The Bachelor and DWTS. There are two new shows coming up next year, and these should definitely get fans buzzing. What’s the scoop?
Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss recently teased via Twitter that there was a big announcement coming, and now the news is out. Fleiss indicated that there was a new Bachelor-related show on the way, and he made a reference to letting the games begin. The Hollywood Reporter is now revealing additional information about the new series.
Curious fans will have to wait until next February to see this one, but The Bachelor Winter Games will be going up against the Winter Olympics in a new offering that sounds a bit like a winter version of the old series Bachelor Pad. As franchise fans will remember, there were three seasons of that spin-off, which aired during the summer and brought back former contestants to battle in competitions as they try to find love. The Season 3 finale left everybody stunned when Nick Peterson blindsided partner Rachel Truehart by keeping the money they won and could have split.
It would have been pretty hard to top that outcome, so the next summer the franchise shifted gears and created Bachelor in Paradise. Now heading into its fourth season, this spin-off takes out the competitive element and focuses purely on hookups, drama, dates, and romance. Now with the new Bachelor Winter Games show, it looks like the competition element is returning.
This new show will bring back ladies and guys from prior Bachelorette and Bachelor seasons, put them up in a swanky winter resort, and throw them into competitions against one another. However, this time, it is done with a wintery theme. There will be a romance aspect incorporated as well, and the new series will debut in February.
That Bachelor Winter Games premiere date surely leaves some wondering what that means for Season 22 of The Bachelor which would typically debut in January. Most would imagine that Winter Games will air on a different night of the week than the traditional Bachelor series, as the franchise has used both Sundays and Tuesdays in the past for related specials or extra episodes. It’s also possible that the original will be on hiatus during the Olympics, but it doesn’t look like ABC has revealed specifics yet.
As for the upcoming DWTS spinoff, that one is a first and could be interesting. This one will be titled Dancing with the Stars Junior and will be coming up next spring, possibly putting the original on hiatus until the fall. It will focus on younger dancers than the original series, casting either celebrity kids or children of celebrities to compete against one another while partnering with junior ballroom dancers. The judges for this DWTS Junior series have not yet been announced.
Past Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants already do a lot of angling ahead of each Bachelor in Paradise season to make alliances and such, and news of this spinoff Winter Games version should up the ante substantially. Casting will not emerge for that new show for months yet and it will be interesting to see where things head with that one after Season 4 of Bachelor in Paradise airs this summer. From the sounds of things, the contestant pool will be essentially the same for both BIP and Winter Games, but it may be that the new series will go back further in the franchise than the next summer outing will.
Additional spoilers about the new Winter Games show will emerge as the new series is flushed out, and it will be quite interesting to see how this one does in terms of ratings. Will you be planning to check out The Bachelor Winter Games or Dancing with the Stars Junior when they debut in 2018?
[Featured Image by Jesse Grant/Getty Images]
