Dick Wolf’s vision for FBI as a franchise continues to come together with a potential third series on CBS.
I hear the network is eying FBI: International (working title), which would focus on the FBI’s international operations. The project, which is still in the dealmaking stages, is being written by one of the top showrunners in the Wolf universe, Derek Haas, who is expected to serve as showrunner. CBS declined comment.
Haas would executive produce the series with Wolf Entertainment’s Wolf, Peter Jankowski and Arthur Forney. Universal Television, part of Universal Studio Group, produces in association with Wolf Entertainment and CBS Studios.
FBI: International joins two other offshoots of formidable CBS procedural franchises targeted for next season, NCIS: Hawaii, a spinoff, and CSI: Vegas, a revival featuring original and new cast members, led by William Petersen and Jorja Fox.
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FBI marks the third successful procedural franchise for Wolf, along with Law & Order and One Chicago on NBC. He pitched the original FBI series as the starting building block of an universe and has been working on expanding the franchise from the start. The first season of FBI spawned planted spinoff FBI: Most Wanted. Things are still in flux, but I hear FBI: International also may be introduced as a backdoor pilot, a strategy Wolf has been using consistently for his offshoots.
With last season spent focusing on growing the original series and launching the first spinoff, attention shifted to a potential second FBI offshoot heading into this season.
“We are always talking to Dick [Wolf] and Dick is always bouncing ideas off of us and I can’t rule anything out,” CBS Entertainment President Kelly Kahl said about the possibility of hatching a third FBI series in an interview with Deadline last May.
Wolf hinted at an FBI expansion in January 2020, noting that the franchise offers an “endless trove of stories”.
“There is the FBI and basically all other law enforcement,” he said. “These are true‑blue people, and we should be honoring them in a variety of ways.”
Haas is the co-creator/executive producer of Chicago Fire and executive producer on the other Chicago series. He also has been leading mothership Chicago Fire as showrunner.
He is not a stranger to the FBI franchise. Haas stepped in when the original series was going through growing pains and instability early on and provided a steady hand as co-showrunner in Season 1.
FBI quickly found its footing and has become CBS’ most watched regularly scheduled series, with FBI: Most Wanted as No. 3.
Now in its third season, the mothership FBI, created by Wolf and with Craig Turk, stars Missy Peregrym, Zeeko Zaki Jeremy Sisto, Alana De La Garza, Kathine Renee Turner and John Boyd. It centers on the inner workings of an elite FBI unit in New York office.
Sophomore FBI: Most Wanted, created by René Balcer, stars Julian McMahon, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Kellan Lutz, Roxy Sternberg, Nathaniel Arcand and YaYa Gosselin. It is centered on the Fugitive Task Force of the FBI that tracks and captures the notorious criminals on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
The FBI expansion comes on the heels of Wolf adding another series to the Law & Order franchise, the upcoming Law & Order: Organized Crime. He also has a New York Undercover reboot set at Peacock.
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