Since Chris McCarthy took over the network a few months ago, he has discussed a franchise approach for Showtime. As the premium cable network begins its integration with Paramount+ and adopts a new name, Paramount+ with Showtime, this plan will include growing popular programs with numerous spinoffs in the style of the Yellowstone universe.
Brian Koppelman and David Levien, the creators of the television series Billions, have been teasing possible spinoffs to Deadline for some time. Showtime refused to confirm the plan, but McCarthy did so in an interview with WSJ, revealing that the four projects in development are spinoffs set in Miami, the self-declared capital of cryptocurrency, and London, then
the center of the global financial system, as well as offshoots of Millions, a soap opera about aspiring financiers, and Trillions, a drama about the super-rich. (More information about the four Billion series now in production can be found at the bottom of the story.)
McCarthy added that there would be a Dexter prequel. The project, which has a straight-to-series order, takes place in Dexter’s hometown of Miami. It will include tales of historical serial killers as well as the original narrative of the main character. Dexter: New Blood, a recent sequel series that broke viewing records on Showtime, is also probably going to get a second season, according to McCarthy.
The Trinity Killer, who John Lithgow portrayed in the original series, is one of the Dexter characters about whose origin stories the network is considering spinoffs.
The Department, a recently approved adaptation of the French series The Bureau from George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Smokehouse Pictures and the organizations behind the Yellowstone franchise, MTV Entertainment Studios, which McCarthy oversees, and 101 Studios, has similar plans for Showtime’s universe-building. If the series were successful, it would give rise to spinoffs featuring foreign secret services.
The network’s recent cost-cutting measures, which included the decision to cancel American Gigolo and Let the Right One In after one season each and to forgo moving forward with the finished new series Three Women, which is currently being shopped, led to the development of programming plans for the Showtime brand. The network also yanked 21 programs from its streaming services, most of which were Showtime originals with brief runs.
The mystery shows Yellowjackets, whose debut season is second only to Dexter: New Blood in Showtime ratings has received the only significant renewal since McCarthy took over supervision of the network. At the time of the network’s renewal in December, he spelled forth the general outline of the strategy.
“As we head into 2023 and beyond, we plan to lean into Showtime’s strengths and focus on three key areas that have defined the brand,” McCarthy said. “Complex and subversive antiheroes like Dexter and Yellowjackets, powerful high-stakes worlds like Homeland and Billions, and unconventional cultural takes like The L Word and The Chi – all to make the biggest hits possible and build them into hit franchises as we have done very successfully across the company.”
The Department is seen as a spiritual successor to Homeland and a show in the Homeland mold that the network can exploit with offshoots because Showtime’s parent company Paramount Global does not control the Emmy-winning Homeland, produced by Disney’s 20th Television, McCarthy told the Wall Street Journal.
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Here are specifics on the executive-produced Billions of spinoffs currently in development. The pair’s overall contract with Showtime, producing the shows alongside MTV Entertainment Studios, was recently extended. The mothership television series’ seventh season is now being created in New York for a later-in-the-year premiere.
BILLIONS: MIAMI (w/t), a brand-new chapter in the series, is set in the realm of private aircraft, where the clientele thinks they are exempt from the laws of society, the government, and gravity, in the middle of the city’s affluence, nightlife, illegal activity, and cryptocurrency. On this project, Koppelman and Levien are already at the writing stage.
BILLIONS: LONDON (w/t), a different version that is transatlantic and takes place in the realm of UK finance.
MILLIONS (w/t), a television program that follows diverse thirtysomething want to be financiers as they attempt to succeed in Manhattan.
TRILLIONS (w/t), a drama based on made-up accounts of the wealthiest people in the world — business titans who live all over the nation but occasionally cross paths and clash with one another.
