The Law & Order franchise is poised to continue expanding.
Law & Order: Hate Crimes, a spinoff that was ordered back in 2018, might finally see the light of day.
Thirteen episodes were ordered originally, but the show seemingly entered development hell, while NBC maintained that it was still on the agenda.
Now, Law & Order: SVU showrunner Warren Leight has opened up about the project and where it could air.
“I think it was perceived to be a better fit with Peacock,” he said of NBC Universal’s new streaming service during THR’s TV Top 5 podcast.
“The vocabulary people use when they commit hate crimes is not acceptable on network television, and that’s an interesting consideration.”
The showrunner went on to speak about how he thinks the show should be made.
“I think [Hate Crimes] is a show that needs to be made,” he said. “Where it dovetails with SVU, it’s about the toll a hate crime takes on a victim, a victim’s family, and a community. It’s an arena I think needs to be written about. I’d like to see this show go [forward].”
Co-created with former Law & Order: Special Victims Unit showrunner Warren Leight, the latest installment of the enduring and wildly popular Law & Order franchise is based on New York’s actual Hate Crimes Task Force, the second oldest bias-based task force in the U.S.
The unit, which pledges to uphold a zero-tolerance policy against discrimination of any kind, works under the NYPD’s real Special Victims Unit and often borrows SVU’s detectives to assist in their investigations.
At the time the series was announced, Wolf issued a statement saying, “As with all of my crime shows, I want to depict what’s really going on in our cities and shine a light on the wide-ranging victims and show that justice can prevail.”
“Twenty years ago when SVU began, very few people felt comfortable coming forward and reporting these crimes, but when you bring the stories into people’s living rooms – with characters as empathetic as Olivia Benson – a real dialogue can begin.”
“That’s what I hope we can do with this new show in a world where hate crimes have reached an egregious level.”
NBC also has an Elliot Stabler spinoff in the works, and it will bring Christopher Meloni back to the franchise.
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.