One of them most disappointing cancellations of 2025 has to be FBI: International, especially after the series finale. Despite having time to wrap up the story, the writers chose to leave it on a cliffhanger. It’s clear that they expected FBI: International season 5 to happen.
TVLine spoke to the creator and former showrunner of FBI: International about the cancellation. Derek Haas is now working on Countdown, which has premiered on Prime Video, and he shares that he doesn’t think it was quality that led to the cancellation. So what was it?
Derek Haas praises FBI: International season 4
Haas told the publication that in terms of quality, the series was still strong. We will ignore the series finale for this point, because had the show not been canceled, we wouldn’t be so bothered by the cliffhanger. The fourth season wouldn’t have felt too much like the Wes Mitchell show in the way it did with the cancellation looming over it.
Overall, the series has always been one of the stronger FBI shows for the fans. It suffered from some major cast turnover during the first three seasons, but that wasn’t to do with the quality of the storytelling. In fact, the actors were the ones who chose to leave for the most part. The fourth season didn’t just bring in Wes Mitchell, but we also saw Tyler Booth, who offered a buddy cop relationship to our screens that previous seasons hadn’t been able to offer.
FBI: International was cheaper to make than FBI: Most Wanted
It doesn’t look like it was the price of production, either. FBI: International was one of the cheaper shows in the Dick Wolf universe to make, because of the fact that it films outside of the United States. This will be surprising to some, as many people thought it was the most expensive due to the cost.
Haas shared this piece of information because CBS Entertainment chief Amy Reisenbach talked about the economic responsibility when talking about the cancellation of both FBI: Most Wanted and International. By knowing that the show was lower in cost to produce, that statement doesn’t really stand.
It could be that the licensing negotiations weren’t going well. The FBI franchise is produced by Universal TV Studios, and then CBS licenses that. Like SWAT and The Equalizer, it means negotiating the price per episode, the cast budgets, and much more. So, if CBS was struggling to get a favorable answer, cancellation may have been the only choice.
In the end, we’ll probably never get a full answer about the decision. It just comes down to cost, but Haas doesn’t think that it was due to the quality of FBI: International.
