Wicked night in the Dancing with the Stars ballroom was such a success that fringe fans probably didn’t process (or realize) how the Disney-owned network was promoting IP from a rival studio — and getting paid for it.
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It was the first time the 20-year-old dance competition had agreed to a movie integration, and it likely won’t be the last. BBC Studios Chief Ryan O’Dowd tells Deadline that he’d like to continue to explore those opportunities but “never at the expense of the show itself and the creative of the show.”
“We were actually approached by the team at Wicked,” explains O’Dowd of Universal, which is prepping for the opening of Wicked: For Good in theaters November 21. “Those partnerships are becoming more and more prevalent, and we’re not turning those away. We’re looking at the right opportunities and exploiting them when we can.”
The unprecedented arrangement was a boon for the ballroom, explains Executive Producer Conrad Green, because the “money we were able to get as part of that integration meant we were able to do one more show in the series that had really high production values and a really big opening number.”
“It also meant that some of the money we would have spent on that show can be put into other parts of the show, so it basically boosts the production quality of the entire series,” adds Green.
Wicked night on Oct. 21 kicked off with a lively opening number that was choreographed by Christopher Scott, who also created the moves for the Wicked films. Music from the franchise was then integrated into the various numbers, such as “What is this Feeling? for Alix Earle’s jazz number and “Defying Gravity” for Elaine Hendrix’s contemporary.
“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,” says Green, who also noted they didn’t collect any cheddar for doing a TikTok night on Sept. 30. “[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.”
Viewers certainly liked what they saw: the Oct. 21 episode averaged 6.63M total viewers, which was up 11% over Dedication Night the week prior. Not only did Wicked night lure the largest audience of the season, it also marked the fifth consecutive week of growth for the ABC series.
In an interesting twist, Wicked night went up against the return of the NBA to NBC. The Lakers-Golden State Warriors game didn’t average as many viewers as DWTS did (5.11 million versus 6.63) but there were no losers in the end, says O’Dowd.
“It was a massive win for us, having that many more eyeballs on what was essentially a Universal property in Wicked,” he says. “So everybody kind of won.”
Tonight marks the semi-finals of DWTS.