There will be four NCIS shows on CBS this season, including the flagship series with
Wilmer Valderrama and Sean Murray.
Photo by Robert Voets/CBS
In the past couple of weeks, there has been news about a spinoff of Manifest, a Top Boy prequel series, a Superman-adjacent mockumentary show and a meta-spinoff of Sons of Anarchy, along with Dan Stevens getting the title role in a RoboCop series remake.
That string of stories makes it feel like all streamers and networks are doing is looking at the stuff already in their libraries and going, “Anything we can do here?” — and from the outside, wondering from the outside whether anyone with the power to green-light shows even cares about making original material.
The answer to the second part is yes: There’s also been news about a new original series from Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee, a limited series starring Kate Winslet and Maxine Peake from Adolescence writer Jack Thorne and even a new USA Network show that sounds like it stepped straight out of its 2010s “blue skies” era.
But there’s also no denying that series development is increasingly driven by IP — intellectual property, i.e. things studios and streamers already own. NBC’s Chicago shows, the Scrubs revival at ABC and the ever-expanding Yellowstone-verse are all prime examples of IP mining. More broadly, IP also encompasses adaptations of other material (a la Reacher or The Lincoln Lawyer) that has name recognition already but isn’t necessarily owned (beyond having the rights to adapt it) by whatever company is making it.
So is it worth it? Does basing shows on pre-existing properties make them more successful than shows based on original ideas? Let’s take a look.