It’s not typical for rival companies to enter into joint ventures, but the decision by Universal’s Wicked team to reach out to Disney’s Dancing with the Stars to partner on a theme night for Season 34 was a mutually beneficial move that had an impact on the show. Executive producer Conrad Green told Deadline that the paid partnership boosted the production quality of the entire series. It’s why Ryan O’Dowd, President of Unscripted at BBC Studios and DWTS executive producer, wants to pursue “the right opportunities and exploiting them when we can.”
Key Takeaways
- How Universal and Disney’s partnership came to be.
- The benefits of the partnership.
- Whether fans should be concerned about paid partnerships taking over DWTS.
READ: GH’s Scarlett Spears Sparkles and Has Fun at the ‘Wicked: For Good’ New York Premiere
A Wicked Good Time for All
Wicked: For Good, the second part of the hit film adaptation of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda’s (Ariana Grande) story, releases in theaters on Friday, November 21. That’s why it was good marketing to have DWTS have a themed night on Tuesday, October 21, a month before the movie hit the big screen.
The competition series has been expanding its younger fan base through the efforts of pro dancers like Rylee Arnold, who has been using her platform on TikTok to promote the show. The increased influx of social media influencers in the cast has also had a hand in this outreach, fostering age diversity in the audience (Find out why GH’s Scarlett Spears recently attended the New York premiere of Wicked: For Good).
Why Wicked Night Was The Right Fit For DWTS
The team behind Wicked contacting DWTS made sense. They had the leverage to promote the film in an engaging manner that is organic to the series’ format. It was an opportunity to showcase the movie’s music, costuming, and even its choreography through an opening number choreographed by Christopher Scott, who was responsible for the dance sequence in both films. The partnership was paid, which is a marked difference for a themed night on the program.
In the past, we’ve done things like Grease as a theme night, and those worked really well but we didn’t get paid by anyone to do that. [Wicked night] was one of those examples where two things fit really well together. I expect the Wicked team will be looking at that as really useful integration, because it got people who weren’t necessarily super fans of Wicked to get a real glimpse of it and get excited about it.
More Paid Partnerships Are in The Show’s Future
The dance show had never done a film integration before, but fans are likely to see more partnerships like this. Not only because the episode drew an average of 6.63M total viewers, making it the most-watched night of the season, it also freed up money in DWTS‘ budget. Conrad shared how this meant they “were able to do one more show in the series that had really high production values and a really big opening number” while allocating some funds to be spent elsewhere in production, which “basically boosts the production quality of the entire series.”
But if you’re a longtime fan who’s worried that paid partnerships could bog down the show’s format, don’t be. Dowd told Deadline that exploring these opportunities would never come “at the expense of the show itself and the creative of the show.” If they go as well as Wicked Night did, we could see paid theme nights becoming a staple of the series.
READ: What NFL Fans Can Expect From Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story
