Wow, ABC Is Reportedly Considering A 'Bachelor In Quarantine' Spinoff

Dating during quarantine might feel a bit impersonal, but if anyone could make it romantic AF, it'd be Bachelor producers. Since some of the franchise's scheduled shows shut down production due to coronavirus concerns, the Bachelor team is apparently thinking of ways to bring fans the content they crave while stuck at home. One of the ideas being tossed around? A Bachelor in Quarantine spinoff.

News of a potential new Bachelor show came from ABC exec Robert Mills in an interview with Deadline. He praised the franchise for being nimble throughout the years, and suggested that flexibility won't stop now. "The best thing about The Bachelor is its willingness to evolve as a format," he said. "So if we need to shoot a cycle that reflects these times, that’s what we’re going to look at doing."

Although the name Bachelor in Quarantine sounds an awful like Bachelor in Paradise, the shows would likely have to be quite different from the Mexico-set summer series. Sure, Paradise's super-secluded location is less crowded than filming out in various U.S. cities like they do for The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, but it's still risky. “Getting 20 cast members is one thing, getting 100 to 180 crew members and putting a director in a truck next to the producers, where you’ve got 30 people in a trailer next to each other is another thing," Chris Harrison recently said on The Bill Simmons Podcast. "There’s a lot of logistics that go into it."

So, if having the typical production crew on-site is basically out of the question, what could a Bachelor in Quarantine spinoff look like? Perhaps the couples could go on dates over FaceTime or Zoom while the world watches them. Or, maybe healthy contestants could even stay together (after quarantining alone for two weeks, that is), and they'd have to act as their own film crew and production team, just like they're doing for KUWTK.

A Bachelor in Quarantine spinoff could serve as an interesting temporary replacement for all the franchise shows that were canceled, placed on hold, or still in limbo: Clare Crawley's season of The Bachelorette was postponed in March; filming Bachelor in Paradise in early August still seems to be up in the air. Bachelor Summer Games was nixed altogether, though since the Tokyo Summer Olympics was postponed until 2021, it's possible the Bachelor equivalent to those games could air then too.

If the Bachelor in Quarantine concept doesn't work out, it sounds like the team is still dedicated to producing content. Deadline also reported producers are considering doing other kinds of specials or retrospectives (perhaps using old franchise footage) while production is on hold.

So far, none of these concepts are actually set in stone. Fans will have to stay tuned to see if any of them will become a reality.