Abcs Dirty Dancing Remake — Tweet mocking ABC's Dirty Dancing remake with a photo of empty theater seats on a TV

Abcs Dirty Dancing Remake

2017eventclassic

Published August 15, 2026

ABC's Dirty Dancing Remake is a 2017 made-for-TV musical based on the 1987 Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey film. It aired on May 24, 2017 and turned into a live Twitter roasting session, with viewers mocking the wooden acting, weak dancing, and cringe-worthy retake of the famous water lift.

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Overview

ABC's Dirty Dancing Remake is the 2017 television musical that starred Abigail Breslin as Baby and dancer Colt Prattes as Johnny Castle, with Nicole Scherzinger playing Penny 1. The three-hour broadcast was pitched as ABC's next big made-for-TV musical event, riding the wave of Grease Live! and Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do The Time Warp Again 4.

Instead of matching those hits, the remake landed at 20% on Rotten Tomatoes and was described as "a hollow remake that trips over its own good intentions" 3. The Twitter dogpile that ran during the broadcast, more than the film itself, is what turned the airing into a meme moment 1.

Origin & Background

Platform
ABC (broadcast) / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
ABC; Twitter viewers
Date
2017

On December 8, 2015, The Hollywood Reporter announced that ABC would produce a Dirty Dancing remake with Abigail Breslin as Baby, a script by Jessica Sharzer of American Horror Story, and Wayne Blair directing 5. Producers cast Colt Prattes as Johnny on February 23, 2016, with choreography from Hamilton's Andy Blankenbuehler 6. The film aired on ABC on May 24, 2017 1.

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How It Spread

While the movie aired, #DirtyDancing became the No. 1 worldwide Twitter trend as viewers live-tweeted their disappointment 1. Vox summed up the reaction as "several hours of ridicule," flagging Breslin's teen Kirsten Dunst impression and the chemistry-free pairing with Prattes 1. BuzzFeed rounded up the meanest tweets, including one that read "Jennifer Grey did not get a nose job to be disrespected like this" 2.

The water lift scene attracted the loudest mockery. Twitter user @bibble8gubbles posted a side-by-side of the original and remake lifts with the caption "When you order it online Vs when it arrives," which pulled more than 2,300 retweets and 4,900 likes 4. Another user reposted the same image as "the epitome of a Pinterest fail" tagged #nailedit 2. An empty-auditorium photo captioned "nice they included the shot of the people who appreciate this remake" also made the rounds 2.

The pile-on became its own joke genre: fake announcements for ABC's Ghost, ABC's Jurassic Park, and ABC's Titanic ("Jack lives!!!") circulated as jabs at the network's remake habit 2. Business Insider called the film a "disaster" and Rolling Stone published a "10 Most WTF Moments" list within days 4.

How to Use This Meme

The template is basically dunking on a lazy nostalgia reboot. People post the water lift side-by-side or reuse the "when you order it online Vs when it arrives" caption whenever a beloved property gets a bad remake 4. Fake "ABC remake of [classic film]" tweets, like the "Titanic remake: Jack lives!!!" joke, are a reliable format any time a studio floats another reboot 2.

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