Dancing with the Stars has a new showrunner, Andrew Llinares.
The veteran producer oversaw several high profile UK reality competitions, including Pop Idol, the forerunner to American Idol. He also launched X Factor and executive produced Britain’s Got Talent. He moved to Los Angeles from the UK in 2011 to produce the US version of X Factor for FOX in 2011.
Llinares will take over for the upcoming all athletes DWTS cycle premiering Monday April 30, after American Idol moves to a once a week format.
“Dancing With the Stars is one of the largest scale shows on television, and I love that it provides a place for me, as a producer, to have big, ambitious ideas that I can then bring to life,” Llinares told The Hollywood Reporter. “It can be quite the undertaking to come in to a show that has been on the air for 25 seasons, but I’m excited about taking on the challenge and finding new ways to take the show forward.”
“The challenge is to find a way to hold on to the key values of the show, while moving it forward while keeping current and fresh,” Llinares said of his goals for DWTS. “It’s definitely about evolution rather than revolution. Story and emotion are absolutely key for me. With that in mind, I want us to find ways to make the stories on the show even more compelling and the emotional connection which the viewer has to the performances, even stronger. I also want us to come up with ideas that surprise and excite the viewers every week so that they keep coming back for more.”
“Over the years, many athletes who’ve participated as the celebrity dancers on DWTS have gone on to win the Mirror Ball trophy; they are used to training and competing, so they tend to do very well,” Llinares told THR. “I think we’ll see an intensity and level of competition that we may never have seen before on the show.”
