Almost a year after the Criminal Minds revival for Paramount+ was announced, there is still no one officially attached to the series. However, six fan favorite cast members, Joe Mantegna, Kirsten Vangsness, Adam Rodriguez, A.J. Cook, Aisha Tyler and Paget Brewster, have agreed to come back, subject to closing their deals and availability, I have learned.
I hear finalizing the sextet's contracts has been put on hold as Criminal Minds lead studio, ABC Signature, moved to make a deal with the series' longtime executive producer/showrunner Erica Messer. Negotiations with Messer, who has an overall pact with the studio, are still ongoing, with the two sides getting closer but still not close enough for a deal to be imminent, sources said. Meanwhile, I hear that a license agreement for a 10-episode new season of Criminal Minds has been reached between Paramount+ and the studios behind the crime drama, ABC Signature and CBS Studios. (A license deal with the network/platforms as well as pacts with showrunner(s) and the cast are all necessary elements for a series to go forward.)
I hear Mantegna, Vangsness, Rodriguez, Cook, Tyler and Brewster are in sync and ready to finish negotiating once Messer's situation is resolved. The sextet represents the majority of Criminal Minds' cast in its 15th and final season. Missing from the list are original cast member Matthew Gray Gubler, who had indicated that he was ready to move on after playing Spencer Reid for 15 years, and Daniel Henney, who stars in The Wheel Of Time. The Prime Video series, which films in Prague, has been picked up for two more seasons, and any potential Henney guest appearance on Criminal Minds would be subject to his commitment to Wheel Of Time and scheduling, sources said.
Details about the actors' agreements for Criminal Minds are murky but I hear they are multi-year and, like with other series revivals, they are subject to actors' availability. I also hear the deals are not fully exclusive, with the cast members able to do major recurring roles on ongoing series and series regular parts on limited series if production does not interfere.
In its road to the screen so far, the Criminal Minds revival has gone through some major swings. It was announced with much fanfare at the streamer's coming-out presentation last February. By July 31, Brewster told fans on Twitter that "we think it's dead." Fast forward six months to Feb. 1 when Nicole Clemens, President, Paramount+ Original Scripted Series, told reporters that Criminal Minds is "alive and well." Behind the scenes, cast members and Messer were first approached about returning before the revival's announcement last February. I hear formal talks with the actors started first, then stalled for months over the summer, around the time Brewster gave her update. Negotiations with the cast resumed in the fall, and I hear general agreements were reached in November. Then in December, ABC Signature started formal negotiations with Messer, which are currently going through the process after a pause over the holidays, sources said.
"We are still very much in development on Criminal Minds," Clemens said during Paramount+'s virtual TCA executive session earlier this week. "We'll have more to share on that soon but it is alive and well."
Clemens indicated that the executive changes at the streamer last summer when she added her Paramount+ duties, contributed to the delay in the reboot's progress.
The original series, created by Jeff Davis, follows a group of criminal profilers who work for the FBI as members of its Behavioral Analysis Unit, using behavioral analysis and profiling to investigate crimes and find perpetrators. The group is led by Senior Agent David Rossi (Mantegna) and includes Agents JJ Jareau (Cook), Tara Lewis (Tyler) and Luke Alvez (Rodriguez) as well as Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia (Vangsness) and Unit Chief Emily Prentiss (Brewster).
The classic broadcast procedural is being serialized for binge-driven streaming consumption, with the team coming back together to investigate a single case over 10 episodes in the new season for Paramount+.
Criminal Minds is among ViacomCBS' most prized titles in the streaming era. It had been a top performer on Netflix since before the streamer started releasing viewership information. While Paramount+ has all 15 seasons, Netflix carries the first 12. They accounted for 33.9 billion minutes of viewing on the global platform, making it the most watched title on Netflix in 2021. Criminal Minds also was the third-most-streamed series in 2020 on Netflix behind The Office and Grey's Anatomy, with 590M hours viewed.
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