Light The Torch! Bachelor: Winter Games Filming Has Commenced

Update: It's official: Filming for the latest addition to the Bachelor franchise is underway. Creator Mike Fleiss tweeted today that Hannah Storm of ESPN is on hand for The Bachelor: Winter Games, so apparently they're taking this sports thing seriously. After all, the spinoff is timed to coincide with the 2018 Olympic Games, so it's got some pretty stiff competition.

"The great @HannahStormESPN is bringing her journalistic excellence to #TheBachelor Winter Games!!!" Fleiss posted today.

Storm also took to Twitter to describe the competition as "unlike any other."

Per usual, details are being kept under wraps (that is, until Reality Steve gets his hands on some spoilers), but this decidedly unique spinoff has definitely piqued our interest.

Bachelor fans should get ready to cozy up to a brand-new show. The famed franchise, which already includes the original, The Bachelorette, Bachelor Pad (RIP), and Bachelor in Paradise, is adding another entry to the mix with Bachelor: Winter Games.

Taking the drama and intrigue of BiP to the slopes and slaloms of Vermont, the show's creator, Mike Fleiss, is hoping that viewers are ready for situations steamy enough to melt the snowpack.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Chris Harrison will also host the new show. Like Bachelor in Paradise, it'll also bring together alums from the other shows. But instead of fun, sun, and surf, Winter Games — which is set to air in February 2018 to coincide with the Winter Olympics — will include athletic challenges, "including the toughest sport of all: love." There's no gold medal for winning at that particular sport, but the possibility of finding love (and the threat of a return from Chad Johnson) is usually all it takes to get Bachelor Nation to tune in.

"It's going to be very different. It's going to be fun. I'm very excited," Harrison told THR. "We're still working out the creative aspects of the whole thing, and I'll be producing on it as well. But I know what's in store, just the broad strokes."

Perhaps in the spirit of the Olympics, Winter Games will bring in Bachelor contestants from international editions of the show, too. The show is also open to contestants that are off the market, so there's no telling which familiar faces will sign on or which existing relationships will survive.

"It will have some of the Bachelor Pad DNA, in that there is going to be a competition element. And the other thing we're excited about is having contestants form the international formats of The Bachelor," ABC reality chief Rob Mills told THR. "So, you have somebody from Bachelor Japan, Bachelor Australia, Bachelor Canada and Bachelor U.K. We're really excited to see if we can have some international romances as well as the competition in U.S. versus the world."

Harrison has already picked his favorites. He told THR that he's hoping that the twins, Emily and Haley Ferguson, join Winter Games after their one-day stint on BiP and that former NFL player Ryan Sutter comes to Vermont, too. With no limits on who can and can't come back, fans should start dreaming up their fantasy league right now.