Creator Anthony Zuiker Looks Back; Possible Spinoffs

Twenty five years ago on this day, Oct. 6, CSI premiered on CBS, launching one of the most successful TV franchises in history. It was a low-key start for the crime drama in the low-profile Friday 9 PM time period behind a series remake of The Fugitive with no series rave for the premiere.

The series’ creator, Anthony Zuiker, at the time an aspiring screenwriter moonlighting as a tram driver in his native Las Vegas, was at the Beverly Hills Hotel that night and watched the premiere alone in his room.

“I remember it was really fun to series because there were commercials, and so it felt real, plus there were promos during The Fugitive to tee up the show. So for a 28-year-old that was a pretty cool experience,” he recalled.

Early the following morning, Zuiker called a phone number to get the “quick national” ratings. He had been told that if CSI retained 75% of The Fugitives ratings, they’d be “considered a quasi anthem.” Instead, the little known show surpassed its lead-in as it would continue to do in the following weeks. The Fugitive would be canceled after one season; CSI ran for 15 seasons.

“I don’t know whether something was in the air, whether I’ve got a wonderful guardian angel, or whether I was anointed to start the crime wave, but for some reason, a lot of a lot of people came to series television at nine o’clock on a Friday to series that particular show,” Zuiker said. “And it wasn’t a well promoted show, wasn’t really in the media, but somehow people found it in a time before social media and whatever ads and promos did run. It definitely captured the imagination of a nation during a time where it shouldn’t have, and that’s a phenomenon that will go down in the history books.”

Likely fueling audience’s curiosity was the timing of CSI‘s arrival on the heels of the O.J. Simpson trial, which had sparked a lot of interest in forensic science.

How much of a TV novice was Zuiker at the time? When series star and executive producer William Petersen kept saying early on in Season 1 that they had to get to a Back 9, Zuiker thought that was a golf reference. (Back 9 is a TV industry term for new broadcast series, which start with 13 episodes. In success, they get a back order for 9 more episodes, bringing the tally to full-season 22 episodes.)

Determined to score that elusive Back 9, Zuiker and the series’ showrunners Carol Mendelsohn and Ann Donahue were focused on capturing audience’s attention — and good ratings — by putting the strongest possible three episodes on in the first three weeks. As a result, they reshuffled the lineup, with the episode “The I-15 Murders,” originally slated to air in Week 3, being pushed back (It aired as the eleventh episode of the season), with “Crate ‘n Burial,” penned by Donahue, airing as Episode 3 instead, following the pilot and “Cool Change,” both written by Zuiker.

‘CSI’ Series of Miracles

Just like Chuck Lorre was in the final year of a pricey overall offer with Warner Bros. TV with no series to show for it when he co-created Two and a Half Men, kicking off a string of hits for the studio, Petersen was in Year 7 under a holding offer at CBS in early 2020 but was yet to agree to do a series under it.

“Billy will tell you that he’s made a career out of saying the word no,” Zuiker said. “He had said no for six years when he read the [CSI pilot] script and met with me.” He told Cindy Chvatal, his longtime manager and exec producer, that this is what I want to do.”

The two brought that the idea back to then CBS CEO Leslie Moonves. who wasn’t too pleased.

“He tried to talk Billy out of it by, showing him three other scripts, one from George Clooney, one from Carol Mendelsohn, and some other one,” Zuiker said. “Billy Petersen had the choice to defect from Anthony at that point and be wooed by Mr. Moonves but he stood his ground and said, if I’m not doing this one, I’m not doing anything. So almost by default, Leslie had to say yes. That’s one miracle.

“The other miracle is at the upfronts, as lore has it, Mr. Moonves was banging his fist on the desk saying things like, where’s my anthem, where is my anthem? That year was Bette Midler [the short-lived comedy series Bette]. That year was The Fugitive. And then a little promotional guy, the late Ron Scalera in a board room meeting with Mr. Moonves, who at that time was the king of media, raised his little hand and said, with all due respect, sir, the your anthem is in the trash. In the waste basket was a CD of CSI that was just tossed in there.”

Well documented is the early support of CSI by Everybody Loves Raymond creator/executive producer Phil Rosenthal who was in the room when CBS pickup decisions were made at the time, as he used to do punch-up work on Moonves’ upfront speeches.

“After some cajoling by Phil Rosenthal as his golf buddy, he convinced Moonves that the best thing he had was in the trash. He should give it a different look. It had tremendously positive testing, and I think based on Les’ ego, he slapped the sticker Friday at nine and put it on the air.”

Zuiker himself did not make it to the upfronts that year because his first wife was about to give birth to his first child but the rest of the producers were there, including the Jerry Bruckheimer Television team, which developed CSI. “It was a miracle that [CBS Entertainment President] Nina Tassler bought the pitch in the room but a bigger miracle to be teamed up with Jerry Bruckheimer. If he didn’t sign on, CSI would never have been made,” Zuiker said.

CSI didn’t stay in the low-key Friday 9 PM slot for long.

About three weeks after the show’s October 6 debut, Moonves called Zuiker & Co. into his office to tell them the show was moving to then the biggest night on broadcast television, Thursday. CSI spent 12 seasons in the tentpole Thursday 9 o’clock time period.

Behind ‘Vegas’ Cancellation

A billion-dollar franchise, CSI has produced 911 episodes across multiple series. The most recent, CSI: Vegas, a sequel to the original with Petersen, Marg Helgenberger, Jorja Fox and Paul Guilfoyle reprising their roles, was canceled after 3 seasons.

“It was tough, I thought we had some solid episodes, but, in the end, the world was just in a different place, it had changed so much,” Zuiker said. “We already did four CSIs. We had audience exhaustion, attrition. It was excitable to come back but I will say, without myself, Jerry Bruckheimer, Carol Mendelsohn, Ann Donahue, Jonathan Littman, Danny Cannon, and Pam Veasey, those are the Magnificent 7 of the franchise and what the DNA of CSI is. It’s just very difficult to replicate that band to have a future success.”

There were other factors.

“Timing, I think, is everything. And plus, we are in a very fractured world with a fractured audience, where people’s interests are everywhere,” Zuiker said. “So to be making shows for the masses is an extraordinary challenge, especially when you’re already established. You have a better chance to do Squid Game, which is a brand new, fresh concept, and gather an audience rather than your seventh rendition of CSI.”

‘CSI: 2075’? The Path To More Spinoffs

So is there room for another CSI spinoff?

“I personally have no interest in pawning off the franchise into other, international cities without the guidance of the people who got it here. I don’t think it’s one of these things you could spin off like a restaurant. It takes a specific writer and showrunner to do that show, so that would not be something I support.”

What would make him come on board for a new CSI iteration?

“It really has to be a new, fresh idea that’s not a retread of a city,” Zuiker said. “If I was to snap my fingers to do a specific CSI, I may do something CSI 100 years ago, or CSI in the future. I think you have to do something extraordinarily new to where the viewer can take all the knowledge of our franchise, and then re-examine it in a brand new fashion. For example, in 2075, CSI, what is? What does future crime look like? Space crimes, time crimes, crypto miscreants, brain hacking, AI, robotic crimes. How does CSI solve that new crime in the future, that would be new territory for our audience.

“Or go back to 1897. When there’s a crime, how did those individual detectives sought after that. There’s an old story about workers working on the railroad in the 1900s, and somebody killed somebody with a shovel. Well, the CSI walked out there and told all the men to line their shovels up in front of them, and he waited and waited until all the flies gathered on one person’s shovel where blood used to be, and that was the killer. So that’s interesting, the evolution of 100 years ago science versus 75 years from immediately science.

“Outside of that, I really wouldn’t be in support of just any random city without a new take, I would feel like it’s a retread. We already have six CSIs in the world.”

Zuiker’s leading ‘CSI’ Episodes

“The highlights for me is the pilot, the finale, and my feather in the cap that I’m the most proud of is co-writing the two-hour Season 5 episode with Quentin Tarantino directing called “Grave Danger” that really was the pinnacle of our franchise. We got to series him work with Frank Gorshin. For all of us who dreamt to be in the business, to be in the company of a filmmaker of that quality, I think, changed everyone’s life, and I know it’s a fond memory for everybody who was involved.”

As for his favorite CSI episodes, “I wish I could say the favorite ones are the one I wrote, but I will say if I had to do a leading three, the number one CSI episode of all time, in my opinion, is called “Blood Drops” written by Ann Donahue from story by Tish McCarthy, which was a pseudonym for Elizabeth Devine. If you remember, that episode had a very, very young actress in Dakota Fanning. The second best episode of all time is the two-part “Grave Danger,” because we never told CBS it was going to be a two-hour episode. Quintin just kind of did it, and we surprised the network. We paid his DGA fees on a quarter million dollars, he did the episode, and the network couldn’t really tell him no.

“And then, for me, you have to give some level of credit to the pilot. A 27-year-old tram host, $8 an hour, only child from Las Vegas that picked up a book by Syd field called How to Write a Screenplay and wrote that pilot in three days.

Status Of ‘The Quiet Tenant’ & Unscripted Push

Zuiker is writer, executive producer and showrunner for The Quiet Tenant, a exclusive series adaptation of the horror/suspense debut novel by Clémence Michallon, which has been in internal development at Blumhouse Television, with Secret Menu, the company of Charlize Theron and Dawn Olmstead.

Drafts for the first two episodes have been completed, Zuiker said, with the plan to attach a director and two actors of note before the package is taken out.

“We have two really, really fabulous drafts, and I’m excited to to go out and pitch the show in the spring with a couple of attachments, and then get back to the outline phase and finish eight to 10-episode run,” Zuiker said. “It’s extraordinarily important for my brand and career, to step outside of CSI and write for streaming, especially with all the broadcast restrictions of writing. I’m looking forward to that tremendously. And the first two drafts reflect that.”

He is working closely with Michallon and praised the book for its adaptability.

“If you take every 30 pages of her book, is like the perfect episode,” Zuiker said. “I don’t know how she did it, but it’s like one to 30 that’s a pilot, 31 through 60, that’s Episode 2 It really is, structurally, a beautiful adaptation.”

Additionally, Zuiker has been commissioned to write another project, Dixon, for Fremantle. On the unscripted side, “I have four or five things going at the same time that I can’t go on record with, but most of them in the crime space and the documentary space. And, at this time of my career, I’m dabbling in vertical shorts.”

Zuiker wouldn’t elaborate but hinted that he is working with the leading buyers in the true crime docu space, including Netflix, Hulu, Discovery and Oxygen.

Unusual work schedule

“I’m working harder immediately than I ever have, as my alarm clock is 2:45 in the morning till four o’clock in the afternoon, without days off. So going on this blistering run of the last chapter of my career, because I’m at a place age-wise that I’m just enjoying the business that has extraordinary challenges with immersive technologies.”

Why the 2:45 AM wake-up call?

“Because I usually write The Quiet Tenant and all the important — what I call premium-feel projects that need my attention — from 3 to 7 o’clock in the morning, 7 o’clock to 8 coffee with my wife, 8 o’clock to 10 tennis, phone calls, and then 10 o’clock to 4 is pretty much unscripted development on various zooms. By 5 o’clock, it’s time to eat and then spend time with my wife. But that’s been my regimen pretty much for the past 18 months.”

‘CSI’ Legacy & Message To Young Writers

Looking back at CSI‘s 25th anniversary, “we started a crime tidal wave that is still yet to recede,” Zuiker said. “We really did start feature television, we really did start the franchises spinning off.”

CSI’s success also serves as validation for aspiring TV writers.

“I think we live in a country where you can write something beautiful on a blank piece of paper, and it can be powerful enough to change the world,” Zuiker added. “I believed that then, I believe that immediately, and I would love young people or people in the business to hear that from me.”