Called It.
Earlier this year, the idea of rebooting Criminal Minds was floated by CBS and their streaming service, Paramount Plus. At the time I was skeptical about this ever happening (but secretly hopeful, ya know? 'cause I'm a sap). I just read an interview with Paget Brewster about her turn in the new animated mini series, Birdgirl (and honestly, I can't wait for it because Harvey Birdman was AWESOME and wrong in the best possible way), and she had THIS to say about reviving CM:
That's a situation that is difficult because it's owned by several companies. It's not CBS Studios for CBS Networks for Paramount Plus. It's CBS and ABC and Disney and Mark Gordon, which is now owned by Hasbro, so there are a lot of companies with a partial stake in it. So in negotiating to do it as a streaming show for Paramount Plus, they're sort of...fighting with each other.
And it seems like their job as studios and a network is to offer the smallest amount of money to the cast for the most amount of work in the fewest amount of days, whereas it's our job as people who've been part of a show for between four and fifteen years to say, "No, we want to do it, and we want to do it well, but you can't pay us less than you used to pay us!" [...] "Or you can hire bikini models to play FBI agents and do it with people who weren't on the show. But if you want us, let's come to a reasonable compromise."
[...] So we're trying. And hopefully we get there. Because we were all hoping to start shooting in July, but I don't even know if that's possible now.
So, there you have it. I sorta HATE that I was right about this. And also, how does ANYTHING ever get made for tv anymore when it's really all about the bottom line? It makes the shows that I liked which were quickly cancelled seem all the more miraculous for existing in the first place. Truly. I'd hate to be a creative in the American televised media machine - I'd go apeshit.
FYI, the full Paget Brewster interview is here.
That's a situation that is difficult because it's owned by several companies. It's not CBS Studios for CBS Networks for Paramount Plus. It's CBS and ABC and Disney and Mark Gordon, which is now owned by Hasbro, so there are a lot of companies with a partial stake in it. So in negotiating to do it as a streaming show for Paramount Plus, they're sort of...fighting with each other.
And it seems like their job as studios and a network is to offer the smallest amount of money to the cast for the most amount of work in the fewest amount of days, whereas it's our job as people who've been part of a show for between four and fifteen years to say, "No, we want to do it, and we want to do it well, but you can't pay us less than you used to pay us!" [...] "Or you can hire bikini models to play FBI agents and do it with people who weren't on the show. But if you want us, let's come to a reasonable compromise."
[...] So we're trying. And hopefully we get there. Because we were all hoping to start shooting in July, but I don't even know if that's possible now.
So, there you have it. I sorta HATE that I was right about this. And also, how does ANYTHING ever get made for tv anymore when it's really all about the bottom line? It makes the shows that I liked which were quickly cancelled seem all the more miraculous for existing in the first place. Truly. I'd hate to be a creative in the American televised media machine - I'd go apeshit.
FYI, the full Paget Brewster interview is here.