Like FBI: International fans, series co-creator Derek Haas is understandably sad about the spinoff’s cancellation by CBS after four seasons.
Also like FBI: International fans, he is unsure about the why behind that decision.
After speaking with Haas about Countdown (his new Prime Video thriller starring Jensen Ackles, Eric Dane and Jessica Camacho), TVLine sought out his uniquely qualified reaction to FBI: International being cancelled back in March, along with sister spinoff FBI: Most Wanted. (Haas, who’d previously co-created NBC’s Chicago Fire, created International in 2021 with franchise overlord Dick Wolf.)
“I was so sad to hear about the cancellation,” Haas told me, “because I loved [Chicago P.D. vet] Jesse Soffer as Wes on the show and really thought it was a dynamic cast addition in Season 4.”
Add in Jay Hayden (Station 19) as Special Agent Tyler Booth, a good friend of new Fly Team leader Wes Mitchell’s, and “they were gold together,” Haas opined.
Even with those additions to a solid ensemble led by original cast members Vinessa Vidotto and Carter Redwood — and all while maintaining very decent viewership — International got the axe.
‘INTERNATIONAL’ WAS ‘MUCH CHEAPER’ TO MAKE
International and Most Wanted this past season both averaged about 6.5 million total viewers (with delayed playback), down just 9% from last year. Out of the 14 dramas that CBS aired this TV season, they tied for eighth — ranking higher than the renewed Fire Country, NCIS: Origins and NCIS: Sydney, as well as the cancelled S.W.A.T. and The Equalizer.
Speaking with the press in May, CBS Entertainment chief Amy Reisenbach said, “Obviously we love working with Dick [Wolf],” whose Wolf Entertainment produces the FBI franchise with NBCUniversal Television. “But… we have to be fiscally responsible, and ultimately those deals and the shows just weren’t penciling out for us from an economic perspective.”
In locking down CBS’ schedule for 2025-26, “we always have to look at all of our shows… where they are in their life cycle, what the finances look like, what the ratings are,” Reisenbach said, and “make those tough decisions.”
Production on FBI: International was based out of Budapest, Hungary, which TVLine hears is “much cheaper” when compared to Stateside productions. But sister site Deadline suggested in March that the FBI spinoffs may have been victims of a ripple effect caused by “difficult renewal negotiations” that CBS had in recent years with other shows furnished by NBCUniversal Television.
CBS ‘MUST HAVE HAD REASONS’ TO CANCEL
Speaking with TVLine, International co-creator Haas said, “I have no insight into why it was cancelled.
“I love Amy [Reisenbach] and [EVP of current programming] Eric [Kim] over at CBS plus all my good friends at Wolf [Entertainment], and trust their instincts,” he continued. “So they must’ve had reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of the show.”
TVLine readers gave the FBI: International Season 4 finale — which unlike Most Wanted made no attempt to serve as a proper series finale, and instead sidelined many long-standing characters and left us with a cliffhanger — an average grade of “D-.”
