Last July, it was officially announced that Paramount+ gave a ten-episode order to a Criminal Minds revival, with many actors returning. Now, it has been revealed that the revival not only has a new title but is beginning to add to its cast. Friday Night Lights alum Zach Gilford will be a recurring guest star on Criminal Minds: Evolution.
The original series, which ran from 2005 to 2020, followed the FBI’s elite Behavioral Analysis Unit as they used behavioral analysis profiling to track and catch killers. It followed a case of the week format, but this revival is said to take a more serialized approach. When an UnSub (unknown subject) takes advantage of the pandemic to make a “network of other serial killers”, the BAU must face what may be their biggest challenge yet as the world opens up and the network of killers gets to work. Criminal Minds: Evolution will follow the team as they work to put a stop to this network, one killer at a time. Gilford will have a season-long arc as Elias Voit, who is “an operations analyst for a global cyber-security firm who has a dark side and obsession with death.”
Gilford got his start starring as quarterback Matt Saracen in the football drama Friday Night Lights. Recently, he wowed audiences when he starred in Mike Flanagan’s latest horror series for Netflix, Midnight Mass. He also clearly wowed Flanagan as well, since Gilford is also set to appear in Flanagan’s next two series The Midnight Club and The Fall of the House of Usher. Gilford’s other credits include the horror movie The Purge: Anarchy and series L.A.’s Finest and Good Girls.
In Criminal Minds: Evolution, Gilford will be joining the returning cast of Joe Mantegna, A.J. Cook, Kirsten Vangsness, Aisha Tyler, Adam Rodriguez, and Paget Brewster. Also returning for the revival is Erica Messer, long-time Criminal Minds writer and showrunner. Messer will serve as showrunner, executive producer, and writer, with Mark Gordon, who has been producing the series since the beginning, also returning as an executive producer. Additionally, Breen Frazier and Christopher Barbour, two more long-serving writers and producers on the original series, will be returning to write and executive produce. Lastly, Glenn Kershaw, who directed over thirty-five episodes of the original series, is returning to direct and executive produce Criminal Minds: Evolution.
Criminal Minds: Evolution is expected to premiere exclusively on Paramount+ this fall. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates on this project. Read the official synopsis for the revival below:
In CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION, the FBI’s elite team of criminal profilers come up against their greatest threat yet, an UnSub who has used the pandemic to build a network of other serial killers. As the world opens back up and the network goes operational, the team must hunt them down, one murder at a time.
via Collider