Jordan Fisher returns to competitive ballroom as star and producer of I Won’t Dance, a YA rom-com from director Christine Lakin. Production begins Feb 2027.
There’s a specific kind of memory that lives in your body. Not the kind you recall so much as the kind that comes back when the music starts: the weight shift, the frame, the instinct to lead. Jordan Fisher has that memory. He earned it in 2017, spinning across ballroom floors on national television until he and partner Lindsay Arnold won Season 25 of Dancing With the Stars. He was 23. He hadn’t planned on it changing him. It did.
Nearly a decade later, Fisher isn’t just going back to ballroom. He’s producing a feature film set inside it — I Won’t Dance, a YA sports rom-com directed by Christine Lakin in her feature directorial debut, with Fisher starring as Xavier, described as “the sexy bad boy of the ballroom.”
Production is slated for February 2027, with Film! Canary Islands handling production services and Lokia overseeing international sales.
When the Trophy Isn’t the Point
Here’s what competitive dance does to a person that most people who haven’t done it don’t expect: it rewires how you read a room. You learn to hold a partner’s weight without taking it from them. You learn to make choreography look effortless by making mistakes in rehearsal that most people never see. Fisher knows this. And it shows in how he’s approaching this project; not as a celebrity lending his name and fan base, but as a producer with skin in the creative outcome.
The film stems from a script by veteran ballroom dancer Allison Johnson, which grounds the competitive world in the kind of specificity only someone who’s actually trained in it can write. The story follows Xavier and Alaina — rivals since childhood, separated by ego and ambition — who are forced to partner up weeks before the National Rising Star Championship when both of their partners walk out. It’s an enemies-to-lovers framework that is as old as the genre and, when done right, as reliably satisfying as a clean natural turn.
He brings more than footwork to Xavier
Plenty of dance films promise chemistry and deliver choreography. What makes I Won’t Dance worth paying attention to before a frame is shot is the alignment between subject and talent. Fisher isn’t being cast adjacent to ballroom — he’s someone the ballroom world already claimed, who has since built a career spanning Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway, the To All the Boys franchise, Turning Red for Pixar, and two live broadcast musicals (Rent: Live and Grease Live!).
That range means he brings more than footwork to Xavier. He brings the full vocabulary of someone who has performed across every possible venue scale, from live television to Broadway houses to animated voice work, and knows how each one asks something different from you.
Director Christine Lakin knows a thing or two about transitioning from one phase of a career to another with credibility intact. This is her feature directorial debut, and the producing ensemble around her — including choreographer Sharna Burgess, casting director Mia Cusumano, and international partner Hulahoop Media — reads less a deliberate crew assembled by people who know what it takes to actually get a dance film made and sold.
The Genre Has a Hunger Right Now
I Won’t Dance relates in the vein of Heated Rivalry, the Crave/HBO Max breakout that found a passionate audience by putting two rivals in a confined competitive world and letting the tension do the work. That’s a smart flag to plant. Audience appetite for sports-adjacent romance with real competitive stakes: think Challengers, think Battle of the Sexes, think the sustained cultural love for Strictly Come Dancing in the UK — is genuine and currently underserved in the YA space.
Fisher’s quote says it plainly:
“My time spent in the ballroom competing on DWTS all those years ago has left an indelible mark in my life.”
Jordan Fisher
What makes that land differently is that the rest of his career actually demonstrates it. He didn’t do one dance competition and move on. He went from DWTS to Hamilton to Hadestown to Moulin Rouge. He has been, consistently, a performer who chooses projects where the physical and the emotional demand the same thing from him at the same time.
I Won’t Dance is asking for exactly that.
Mini FAQ
Who is Jordan Fisher and why is he in a ballroom movie? Fisher won Season 25 of Dancing With the Stars in 2017 alongside partner Lindsay Arnold. Since then he has built a career across Broadway, streaming film, animation, and live television musicals. I Won’t Dance marks his return to competitive ballroom as both star and producer.
When does I Won’t Dance start filming? Production is slated for February 2027, with Film! Canary Islands handling production services and Lokia managing international sales.
What is I Won’t Dance about? It’s a YA sports rom-com following two ballroom rivals — Xavier and Alaina — who are forced to partner together weeks before a national championship when both of their partners walk out. The story is written by veteran ballroom dancer Allison Johnson.
I Won’t Dance hasn’t shot a frame yet, but the structure around it is solid — a grounded script by someone who actually knows the world, a star whose competitive ballroom experience is documented and real, and a directorial debut with a specific vision rather than a studio placeholder. Watch the February 2027 production window. This one has the bones.
