CBS dropped a bombshell at its fall 2026 schedule reveal Wednesday by announcing new series NCIS: New York starring LL Cool J and Scott Caan from Emmy-winning The Pitt creator R. Scott Gemmill.
This is a very rare scenario where the lead/co-lead of one spinoff in a franchise, NCIS: Los Angeles‘ LL Cool J, serves as the lead/co-lead of another spinoff in the same franchise playing the same character, NCIS Agent Sam Hanna. The only other case that comes to mind is Law & Order: SVU‘s Christopher Meloni starring as Elliot Stabler on Law & Order: Organized Crime.
NCIS: New York came together very quickly, taking about five months from the first conversations with LL Cool J about it to a series greenlight with a completed script that had gone through revisions, a co-lead cast, a showrunner hired — and everyone involved locked in with closed deals.
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But the fast pickup capped a multi-year effort by CBS and NCIS franchise producer CBS Studios to keep Sam Hanna on TV after NCIS: LA ended its 14-season run in May 2023. It resulted in appearances by LL Cool J on NCIS: Hawai’i and NCIS. And before he sets out to star in NCIS: New York, the actor-rapper will make two more guest appearances on the mothership later this month. They will hint at Sam Hanna’s new chapter but are not designed to set up the spinoff, sources said.
“There’ll be some lines in there that set up New York,” LL Cool J told Deadline.
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After launching two spinoffs during the first 17 years of NCIS‘ run, NCIS: LA and NCIS: New Orleans, the process has been accelerated, with four offshoots introduced over the past five years, two of which are still on CBS, NCIS: Sydney and prequel NCIS: Origins.
With a focus on building franchises under George Cheeks, Paramount’s Chair of TV Media who oversees CBS and CBS Studios, the studio has at least one potential new installment of its main franchises in the works at any time.
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Sam Hanna was identified as the subject of an NCIS offshoot CBS Studios wanted to tackle next, and conversations with LL Cool J about it started last fall, zeroing in on Sam’s hometown of New York as setting. After coming on board, the NCIS: LA star suggested approaching R. Scott Gemmill to write the script.
Gemmill is currently flying high as the creator, executive producer and showrunner of the most acclaimed drama series of the past year, HBO Max’s The Pitt. But before he teamed up with John Wells and Noah Wyle on the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning medical drama, Gemmill was a writer-executive producer on NCIS: Los Angeles for its entire 14-season run and, after serving as No. 2 to creator, executive producer and showrunner Shane Brennan for the first seven seasons, he took over when Brennan stepped down in 2016. Gemmill remained at the helm for the following seven seasons, and he and LL Cool J have stayed close.
With CBS Studios President David Stapf, CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach and their boss Cheeks all aligned, Gemmill was approached just before Christmas.
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“They came to me and said that they were thinking about doing an NCIS: New York with Todd, and I said, I’m in. That’s all it takes,” Gemmill said at CBS’ upfront party Wednesday night, referring to LL Cool J by his real middle name which he uses in personal interactions.
As to why Gemmill agreed so quickly, “Todd’s from New York, so it was great. And it’s as if his character is going back home, as if Todd himself is going back home,” he said. “New York is the burning center of the universe, so I was just excited and happy to be asked to be a part of it. And I jumped at the chance.”
LL Cool J, who is bi-coastal, was born and raised in New York. While exact filming location has not been locked in, NCIS: New York is expected to shoot in and around New York.
Gemmill wrote the first draft of the script during his Christmas break from The Pitt before going back to the show, which is wrapping its Season 2 run on HBO Max this week, with Season 3 production slated to begin in June.
As the draft underwent refinement, conversations started focusing on the co-lead character. Like on NCIS: LA, where Sam Hanna was partnered with Grisha Callen (Chris O’Donnell), on NCIS: New York he will have a partner too.
Per the official logline for the new offshoot, NCIS Agent Sam Hanna (LL Cool J) returns to his hometown of New York City to their field office, partnering with a roguish agent (Caan) and helping lead a new team as they are tasked with high-stakes missions to defend one of the world’s most vital cities and ports.
“It’s gonna be a lot of fun, a lot of sarcasm, lot of banter, lot of witty repartees, lot of New York,” LL Cool J told Deadline on the CBS upfront party red carpet. “It’s gonna be everything you need to get.”
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After finding themselves repeatedly describing the ideal actor for the partner role as a Scott Caan-type, CBS and CBS Studios executives decided to reach out to the prototype himself. Caan previously starred on another CBS/CBS Studios procedural, Hawaii Five-0, and lives in New York.
Asked by Deadline at the Paramount upfront party if it was hard for him to say yes to doing NCIS: New York with LL Cool J, Caan said, “It was hard to say no.”
LL Cool J and Caan previously starred together in an NCIS: LA-Hawaii Five-0 crossover, making for a meta history as Caan played a different character, Danno, alongside LL Cool J’s Sam Hanna in it.
“It’s called acting,” LL Cool J quipped about Caan’s challenge of switching characters opposite Sam.
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The duo showed good camaraderie walking the red carpet and hanging out at the parties for CBS and Paramount’s upfront events this week. And yes, their significant height difference is addressed right off the bat in the pilot with a joke.
Conversations with Caan were already underway when another key piece of the creative team came together just a month ago when, upon recommendation from CBS Studios’ Stapf and EVP Bryan Seabury, Kingdom creator Byron Balasco was approached to come on board as showrunner. (Gemmill was never an option since he has a full-time showrunner job on The Pitt, which produces 15 episodes a year.)
“I actually first met Byron when he was a writer on Without a Trace and I was a baby executive, and I’m delighted to welcome him into the franchise,” Reisenbach, who was a CBS current executive before becoming entertainment president, said of the former writer-producer on the network’s 2002 missing persons procedural.
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Balasco will likely write the second episode of NCIS: New York, which has received a 20-episode order I hear, but things are still TBD as the final deals were just recently completed to announce the series this week.
Despite his busy schedule, Gemmill hopes to stay involved.
“Byron Balasco is going to be running the show, and I will help out as much as I can,” he said.
During the unveiling of the fall 2026 CBS schedule, Reisenbach used suspense for dramatic effect, leaving the 9 PM slot in the Tuesday lineup blank for a few moments before announcing NCIS: New York with aplomb, expressing glee about the network being able to keep the project a secret. (It was a concerted effort, with information about the offshoot kept within a small circle throughout the process.)
The blank space also serves as a good metaphor, as NCIS: New York is bringing in a “missing piece” to the 2026-27 schedule — a new franchise extension.
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In each of the past three seasons, CBS introduced offshoots of an existing series. While new non-franchise entries over that period have had various degrees of success; some, like Tracker and Matlock, have become hits, while some, like Watson and DMV, have been canceled, all universe extensions launched since are still around and doing well.
That was highlighted earlier in the CBS schedule presentation when Cheeks touted the network’s ratings performance with a slide of the most watched new broadcast series for the past five seasons. (CBS has had the No.1 show in each season.)
There were two franchise extensions each launched in 2023-24 and 2024-25, finishing as No.2 (Elsbeth) and No.3 (NCIS: Sydney) behind No.1 Tracker in 2023-24, and as No.2 (Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage) and No. 5 (NCIS: Origins) behind No. 1 Matlock in 2024-25.
The stat for the current 2025-26 season is pretty staggering: CBS is claiming the top four new series in total viewers this season, all of them offshoots: Marshals (No.1), Sheriff Country (No.2), Boston Blue (No.3) and CIA (No.4).
Before the NCIS: New York announcement, CBS was going to go from 4 to 0 franchise titles in 2026-27 as CBS had picked up three new series for next season, two of them original concepts, drama Cupertino and comedy Eternally Yours, and one adaptation of an international format, drama Einstein.
With NCIS: New York, the streak of adding at least one new offshoot has been extended to four seasons. (CBS also has a Fire Country-Sheriff Country medical spinoff in the works.)
NCIS: New York‘s scheduling directly after the mothership series on Tuesdays allows for natural crossovers, sought after by networks for their big ratings potential. That is something CBS had not been able to do with NCIS recently as Origins is set in a different time period and Sydney on a different content with its production on a different timeline.
The new NCIS spinoff — which, per LL Cool J’s signature song, we shouldn’t call a comeback — extends his tenure as Sam Hanna, a character he has been playing for 17 years. Why has he stuck with him for so long?
“He’s a superhero,” LL Cool J told Deadline. “This is a guy who puts his life on the line for his partners, for his friends, for the people that he loves, for his country, and I think that’s cool.”
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