‘Dancing with the Stars’ season 22: Julianne Hough surprisingly not returning as judge

When the 22nd season of “Dancing with the Stars” premieres on ABC in a month’s time, it will be doing so with the original judging panel that everyone came to know and love for some time.

In a statement today to People Magazine, Julianne Hough revealed that she is not going to be joining Carrie Ann Inaba and Burno Tonioli on the panel alongside a returning Len Goodman. Based on its content, it looks as though this is due to some other stuff that she is working on for the time being:

“I will miss being on the panel for Season 22, but have a lot of exciting stuff coming that I look forward to sharing … The pro dancers, producers and crew at DWTS will always be my family.”

Hough did receive rave reviews recently for “Grease: Live,” and it would not surprise us in the least if this led to her getting some other offers that she was more than convinced would be great for her to take up. In the end, the tone of this suggests that perhaps we are going to see potentially more of Julianne on the show in the future; we’ve seen at this point both pros and judges take breaks (Len took season 21 off to focus on being in the United Kingdom for “Strictly Come Dancing”), so why can’t she do it? Given the slight ratings renaissance of “Dancing with the Stars” over the past few seasons, we feel like the show would have her back in a second if they really wanted to do so.

We’ll have more news on the upcoming season in the coming weeks as more is available; for now, be sure to head over here to score of the latest casting rumors! You can also sign up over here in the event you want some other TV news on everything we cover, sent right to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ABC.)