Paramount+ flips on the money printer, orders Criminal Minds reboot to series
After more than a year of development and negotiations, a 10-episode Criminal Minds revival has gotten the green light
Coming to the conclusion—as we all must, when faced with the raw, hard data—that 324 episodes of Criminal Minds was simply far too few, Paramount+ has now issued an official green-light to a revival of the long-running CBS procedural. Per THR (and originally per TVLine), the streaming service has ordered a new season of the show, ensuring that unsub fans will never have to contemplate a world where a steady spigot of TV-friendly serial killer stories isn’t within easy arms’ reach.
The Criminal Minds reboot has actually been around for a hot minute at this point, since roughly that exciting day when Paramount+ emerged, bathed in placental effluvium, from the corpse of the old CBS All Access. (Dear Viacom overlords: We are available for your corporate press release-writing duties.) Originally announced, as a clear no-brainer, back in February 2021, the series has apparently been the subject of some fairly serious cast and crew negotiations, up to and including reports that the project might be in serious doubt of ever seeing the light of day.
Today, though, it sounds like most of those disagreements have been ironed out; THR notes that showrunner Erica Messer, who wrote 42 episodes of the original series, is set to come back, alongside almost all of the sprawling cast that filled out the show in its latter years: Joe Mantegna, Kirsten Vangsness, Adam Rodriguez, A.J. Cook, Aisha Tyler, and Paget Brewster are all on the hook to re-appear. The only holdouts are Daniel Henney, who joined the show late in its life after originating his role on canceled spinoff Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, and Matthew Gray Gubler, the only cast member to maintain main cast status through the show’s entire 15-season run. (Vangsness came close, but was only credited as recurring in the show’s first season.)
Although Criminal Minds never reached quite the ratings heights of fellow procedurals NCIS or CSI, it was a consistent winner for CBS—and only moreso once it made the jump to syndication. The series aired its last episode back in February of 2020; a reality series, titled The Real Criminal Minds, is also reportedly still in the works for Paramount+.