CBS continues to move ahead with its long-term development strategy, ordering another pilot targeting the 2025-26 broadcast season. The network has picked up to pilot drama Einstein (working title), from the Monk team of creator/executive producer Andy Breckman and director/executive producer Randy Zisk.
It follows a pilot order for comedy DMV and a development room for comedy Eternally Yours (working title) — all looking to join Sheriff Country, CBS’ first new scripted series set for a launch during the 2025-26 season.
The third time at CBS — and fourth time overall — proved to be the charm for mounting an U.S. adaptation of the German procedural Einstein with a pilot order. As Deadline reported exclusively in June, the new take had been heating up at CBS.
In it, brilliant but directionless, the great grandson of Albert Einstein spends his days as a comfortably tenured professor until his bad boy antics land him in trouble with the law and he is pressed into service helping a local police detective solve her most puzzling cases.
With a brilliant detective at the center, Einstein draws parallels to Monk — as well as to CBS’ 2000s procedural drama Numbers, about a college mathematics professor and prodigy who helps his FBI agent brother solve crimes.
Breckman, who wrote the Einstein pilot, and Zisk, who will direct it, executive produce alongside Intrigue’s Tariq Jalil; Rose Hughes, Rodrigo Herrera Ibarguengoytia and Laura Beetz for Seven One Studios International.
Jalil had been spearheading the effort to adapt the Red Arrow format in the U.S. for the past six years. It started in 2018 with a version, written by Michael Reisz and produced by Carol Mendelsohn, which was set up for development at NBC via Universal TV.
A year later, Breckman and Zisk developed a new take of Einstein for CBS. The following season, the network teamed with Insatiable creator Lauren Gussis and American Gothic creator Corinne Brinkerhoff for a gender-swapped version.
On the heels of Breckman’s TV return with the highly rated Mr. Monk’s Last Case original movie for Peacock, directed by Zisk, the duo took another stab at the Einstein concept for CBS and CBS Studios.
Written by Martin Ritzenhoff and Matthias Dinter based on the 2015 movie they penned, the German Einstein series ran on Sat.1 for three seasons. It starred Tom Beck as Professor Dr. Felix ‘Einstein’ Winterberg and Annika Ernst as police commissioner Elena Lange. It was produced by Zeitsprung Pictures.
As Deadline reported in January, CBS has changed its development strategy, leading to no pilot orders during the traditional January-May window.
“Pilots aren’t dead, I would say pilot season is probably dead for us because why should we be held to that very specific window anymore, nobody else is,” CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach said during the network’s unveiling of its 2024-25 schedule. “We only get so many shots at bat, let’s make sure when we take those swings that the bases are fully loaded for us.”