‘Criminal Minds’ Revival a Go (Again) at Paramount+

A revival of Criminal Minds is once again on the board at Paramount+.

Almost a year and a half after the project was first announced, the streamer has given a series order to the show, which will reunite castmembers Joe Mantegna, Kirsten Vangsness, Adam Rodriguez, A.J. Cook, Aisha Tyler and Paget Brewster. Longtime showrunner Erica Messer is also on board, though castmembers Matthew Gray Gubler and Daniel Henney won’t return.

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Mantegna teased the revival Tuesday on Twitter with a picture of himself on a partially built set. “Just doing a little inspection today for an upcoming project. #criminalminds,” he wrote.

“For 15 seasons, Criminal Minds was at the forefront of cutting-edge scripted drama as it explored the psychology behind crime — thrillingly,” said Nicole Clemens, president original scripted series at Paramount+. “The series never stopped evolving during its run, and we are beyond excited to bring it back into a new era with new stories for a new generation of viewers at Paramount+. Erica, the whole cast and creative team are building a season full of new twists that we are sure will electrify audiences.”

Paramount+ announced the revival back in February 2021, when the streamer was still CBS All Access. It went through a long development process and protracted negotiations with Messer and the cast, including what turned out to be premature reports that it would be scrapped.

Unlike the long-running CBS procedural, which typically resolved its cases by the end of an episode, the Paramount+ version of Criminal Minds will be serialized, with the BAU team working a single case over the course of the season. That case, per the show’s logline, will see “the FBI’s elite team of criminal profilers come up against their greatest threat yet, an UnSub who has used the pandemic to build a network of other serial killers. Now, as the world opens back up, the network goes operational, and our team must hunt them down, one murder at a time.”

Criminal Minds ran for 15 seasons and 324 episodes on CBS and spawned two spinoffs, Suspect Behavior and Beyond Borders. The original series is consistently among the most watched acquired shows on Netflix, according to Nielsen; Paramount+ and Hulu also carry it.

Messer executive produces the revival along with writers Breen Frazier and Chris Barbour, director Glenn Kershaw and Mark Gordon.

TVLine first reported the green light for the new season.

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