Fire Country may provide some much-needed kindling for a new franchise at CBS.
While speaking at the Banff World Media Festival on Tuesday, CBS Chief George Cheeks
hinted at the possibility that its top-rated procedural could go the way of NCIS and result
in one — or more — fiery spinoffs. “We are focused on mass-appeal franchises,” Cheeks told Deadline’s Peter White. “We started with expanding universes, reimagining, but also creating new franchises. And again, this season’s number one show was Fire Country, which completely lends itself to building out a whole new universe. So it is really important for us to double down on a franchise focus.”
“It became very clear that not only was the show special, it really felt like this could be a great example of us building together a franchise from scratch,” Cheeks continued. “And so I’m like, ‘you guys, congratulations, you got your back nine. Now let’s start talking about ideas for new extensions.’ They’ve already come up with some great ones … We’re not necessarily looking at next year. We’re looking when they’re ready. That’s the beauty of the gestation process. We know that we’re doubling down on this one, so let’s get it right. And whether that that means three years down the road or whether that means a Paramount Plus original or a CBS original, we’ll see where it lands.”
Even though CBS is spinning off its successful Good Wife franchise with Elsbeth starring Carrie Preston while rebooting Matlock with Kathy Bates this fall, Cheeks cautioned anyone from assuming that “dusting off old IP makes our jobs easier.”
“It actually makes it a lot harder because you can’t just, take a title and say, ‘hey, I’m gonna recast it and put ’em out there,’” Cheeks said. “Discerning fans of those … have a real clear sensibility of what they want those shows to be. So I think it’s actually more challenging to figure out how you reimagine for today. How do you make it exciting? What pieces of it do you leave in, what pieces of it do you let go? It’s a very tricky development process.”
