EXCLUSIVE: Great news for Blue Bloods fans — one of the beloved drama’s signature characters, Donnie Wahlberg’s Danny Reagan, will be back on CBS with a new ‘Blue’ cop show in a new city. CBS has given a straight-to-series order to Boston Blue (working title), a universe expansion of the long-running Blue Bloods, for the 2025-2026 broadcast season.
In the new series, from writers Brandon Sonnier & Brandon Margolis (S.W.A.T.), Wahlberg will reprise his role as NYPD Detective Danny Reagan as he takes a position with Boston PD. Once in Boston, he is paired with Detective Lena Peters, the eldest daughter of a prominent law enforcement family.
Boston Blue is produced by CBS Studios in association with studio-based Jerry Bruckheimer Television. Sonnier and Margolis will serve as showrunners and will executive produce alongside Jerry Bruckheimer and KristieAnne Reed of JBTV as well as Wahlberg.
While CBS and CBS Studios, which produced Blue Bloods, had explored spinoffs from the popular procedural drama, including one that would’ve had Danny Reagan move to Texas and another one with Tom Selleck, Boston Blue was not conceived as a Blue Bloods offshoot.
It originated with Sonnier and Margolis, along with JBTV, pitching CBS Studios and CBS a drama, then called Jamaica Plain, that follows a family of police officers in Boston whose eldest daughter is partnered with a new transfer from LAPD. The network ordered a script based off that pitch, sources said.
The script was well received at both the network and the studio whose executives saw the Boston family police drama project as an opportunity to make it part of the Blue Bloods universe by bringing in a character from the New York family cop drama.
Given Boston native Wahlberg’s deep ties to the city, CBS and CBS Studios zeroed in on Danny Reagan and approached the Boston Blue creative team about changing the LAPD transplant character to a NYPD one, Danny.
At the time, the network also ordered backup scripts while Wahlberg was approached about reprising his role, I hear. By early December, Jamaica Plain, named after a Boston neighborhood, was heating up for a pickup with Wahlberg in talks to join. His deal to star and executive produce just closed, and, with him on board and based on the creative, CBS made the decision to order now-titled Boston Blue to series for the 2025-2026 broadcast season.
Boston Blue joins Fire Country spinoff Sheriff Country, also from CBS Studios and JBTV, which is on deck for next season. The new series, as well as Fire Country, fall under JBTV’s overall deal at CBS Studios.
Additionally, CBS is exploring potential FBI, The Equalizer and The Neighborhood spinoffs for 2025-26.
Finding a way to expand the Blue Bloods franchise has been a priority for the network and parent Paramount Global, with potential extensions teased at the company’s shareholder meeting last June. The popular series, starring Selleck, Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, Will Estes and Len Cariou, ended its 14-season run in December while maintaining a devoted fan following. In the series finale, Danny finally asked his longtime NYPD partner, Det. Maria Baez (Marisa Ramirez), out.
Sonnier and Brandon Margolis started in the NBC Writers on the Verge program. After five seasons on the long running NBC hit The Blacklist, they developed and showran L.A.’s Finest, the Sony and JBTV produced Bad Boys spinoff starring Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba for Spectrum. The duo are executive producers on the upcoming third season of Fox’s procedural Alert: Missing Persons Unit.
