‘CSI’ Creator Anthony Zuiker Details Only Ways There’d Be Another Spinoff

The hit CSI franchise is officially two and a half decades old. It all began on October 6, 2000, with the original CSI, and the world then expanded … and kept expanding.

After the original, which ran for 15 seasons and a two-part finale from 2000 to 2015, came CSI: Miami (10 seasons, from 2002 until 2012), then CSI: NY (nine seasons, from 2004 until 2013), and CSI: Cyber (two seasons, from 2015 until 2016). It then returned to Sin City for the three-season CSI: Vegas in 2021. There hasn’t been a CSI on since that show ended in 20024. Could there be another?

TV Insider asked CSI creator Anthony Zuiker just that (and more) when discussing the show’s 25th anniversary.
There have been a number of spinoffs in this franchise. Could there be another?

Anthony Zuiker: It’s a tricky question. I’ll try to answer it. I don’t think another CSI will be born unless I’m involved in it. I don’t think you can hire people to do this show at this level in this generation. And if you did do another show where I was in the mix, it would have to be either A, a CSI of 100 years ago where there was limited access to forensic science to solve old school crimes a century ago, or it’d be futuristic crimes about 75 years from today — space crimes, time crimes, crypto miscreants, brain hacking, AI, robotic crimes. It’ll be things that you hadn’t seen before. And then how CSIs 75 years from now would solve that in the future. I think those are the only two CSIs that would work under my watch. But this is not going to be a franchise, in my opinion, where you would do a CSI: UK or a CSI: Singapore and then hire a production company to pull off 10. That’s something that I wouldn’t approve.

I would watch either of those that you just suggested. It would be so good to see what used to be and what it could be.

Well, an example: Let’s put Meredith in the year 1896, and there were a bunch of railroad workers — 12 railroad workers are working on a railroad on the Mason-Dixon Line, and there was some discrepancy about a cigarette, and one railroad person took their shovel and smacked the other one over the head and killed him dead. Now the police arrive on horseback. Who did it? Well, the forensic scientist of 1896 says this: Everybody put their shovel in front of their person that was used for the railroad and let’s just wait. And about three hours later, this is what happens. A gaggle of flies go on top of the shovel in front of Meredith’s shovel, and they know right there, that was the killer. Fabulous.

When did you have a sense that not only was CSI a hit, but also that it could be become what it did, a franchise with multiple spinoffs?

Well, when I watched it on air October 6, 2000, at the Beverly Hills Hotel with commercials, I felt it was really a strong show. I was probably more bullish about it than anybody. I saw it clearly. But I knew we had something when we got invited to Les Moonves‘ office on Beverly, I would say probably four to six weeks in, and he said to us, we’re going to Thursdays at 9. Everybody panicked, because that’s the big money slot, right? Last time you get to an advertiser to get to the consumer for a movie, to buy a car, to take a trip. But to me, it was a Super Bowl, Thursday at 9. We were there for 12 straight years. The second Mr. Moonves had the vision to move us to Thursday, I knew what the next phone call was. Come into his office with Jerry Bruckheimer and he said to me, “Anthony, pick a city.” And Jerry Bruckheimer said, Miami, and the rest is history. That’s how quick that was. And next thing you know, I’m on a plane with Ann Donahue landing in South Beach and doing Miami, and then Anthony pick a city, New York, Anthony pick a city, CSI: Cyber. It was just the greatest part about that era of television, is one individual had the power to say, pick a city, and you had a show on the air — unprecedented in those days. I just kind of caught lighting in a bottle at the right time at the right place.

I have to say, I think Cyber is the most underrated CSI.

I agree. I mean, the thing about Cyber that’s interesting is, the world wasn’t ready for digital science. It wasn’t ready for the next evolution of the world. Our audience really wanted knives in the back, gunshots. They wanted the dead person in the kitchen. They wanted these organic crime mysteries. But they weren’t going to entertain hacking into a baby camera. They weren’t going to entertain hacking into a smart coffee maker. They just weren’t prepared to understand that a bank robbery in CSI is four guys walking with machine guns, but a bank robbery in Cyber is taking one penny out of three million accounts every eight days, an imperceptible catch, and making millions of dollars, and America just wasn’t understanding. It was way too ahead of its time, and it just didn’t resonate. The digital evidence was not the same as regular evidence, and therefore it got canceled.

Michael Yarish/CBS

And the thing is, the shame about it was honestly, I remember pitching Nina Tassler, these differences between a CSI robbery and a Cyber robbery, and I could see the blood draining from her face on the pitch. She was so horrified about mapping keystrokes to get your password to drain your bank account, all these things that were done. All these are things that we take for granted right now, right? These are the way the world is today. But don’t forget, back in those days, it was a very scary conversation. Almost as scary as AI and robotics feel now to take over jobs or super intelligence of AI, how scary that can seem. That’s how it was times 10 back in those days for Cyber.

Well, every time I go to buy a coffee machine, I see a smart one, I think of that episode of Cyber.

I know. To be fair, look, we had audience exhaustion. At that point, enough was enough. We had four CSIs going, and the world was changing, and streaming was changing. And the emergence of new technology in the consumptive pattern of streaming combined with an overabundance of CSI shows was getting a little bit long in the tooth for the consumer. And it really wasn’t a surprise that the shows began to crumble one by one in that era.

Not many shows can come back like CSI did with CSI: Vegas, and you can really see the difference in forensics.

Oh, for sure. And when I saw the technologies last week, it’s even more intense in terms of there’s so many backups on backups now, machinery wise, just in terms of doing some smudge marks on a CD — disarticulating, not only taking the smudge marks off the CD, but never even have to lift them because they go right into a machine and AI and disarticulate themselves then run through CODIS and then crank out a name with no touch. It’s unbelievable. My shows, you’re doing print powder, tape lifting. No, this is now it goes into a system hands free. Unbelievable.

CSI, Complete Series, Streaming Now, Paramount+

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