Producer Dick Wolf has had a hand in creating some of the most successful TV franchises of all time. There has been at least one Law & Order series on the air since 1990, and two more entires are on the way. The newer Chicago franchise is going strong with upcoming spinoff Chicago Justice set to join Fire, P.D., and Med on NBC in 2017. Now, Wolf has another show in the works, and his magic touch may be enough to create another big hit. He is currently working on an FBI series for USA, and if it's anywhere near as successful as Wolf's past ventures, we could well see spinoffs sooner rather than later.
The new series will be an unscripted program produced with the help of the FBI. USA has not yet given an official count of how many installments we should expect for the first season, nor a proper title, but insiders have reported that the network is looking to break the footage into six to eight episodes. Filming is already underway and has been for a while, according to Variety. The show may benefit from going into production before many people have heard of it and learned what to expect.
Dick Wolf will function as an executive producer as well as the creator of the project. He'll be joined as executive producer by Anne Beagan, who currently works in the office of public affairs for the FBI offices in New York. The collaboration should guarantee a show that is both entertaining and mostly accurate to the dealings of the real FBI. It's actually one of two FBI-based projects for Wolf, who is also working on a potential scripted FBI series for NBC.
As a sister network to NBC, USA should be the perfect place for Dick Wolf's new unscripted series. As anybody who has ever channel-surfed will know, USA seems to constantly air marathons of the various Law & Order shows. In fact, more than one hundred hours of Law & Order franchise reruns are broadcast on USA per month. Those repeats have proved popular enough with audiences that the unscripted series could find a comfortable home on the network, which is working with Dick Wolf for the first time on this project.
Dick Wolf is better known for his scripted projects, but he has delved into the unscripted and reality in the past. He produced the TNT unscripted procedural Cold Justice for three seasons on TNT, which in turned spawned a short-lived spinoff called Cold Justice: Sex Crimes. The in-development Law & Order: You the Jury is planning on taking real court cases and giving TV audiences the chance to vote on how effective witnesses and lawyers are. Could be interesting.
Over on the scripted side, though, NBC has ordered a first season of the unscripted Law & Order spinoff Law & Order: True Crime, which will initially focus on the case of the notorious Menendez brothers' murder trial. True Crime has not yet started production, and NBC hopes to get it on the air in the second quarter of 2017. Given that filming has already begun for the USA project, we may get to see the unscripted FBI series before we see the next Law & Order spinoff.
Either way, it may be a while before we get to see any new series from Dick Wolf. Luckily for fans of what he has to offer, both the Law & Order and Chicago franchises will be back on the airwaves in the near future. Check out our TV premiere schedule to see when those and other shows are officially back this fall.
