'Law & Order': New Spinoff Coming After 'For the Defense' Cancellation

While NBC will not debut a new Law & Order series this fall as previously planned, mastermind Dick Wolf still has an idea for the next installment in his never-ending franchise. After NBC said Law & Order: For the Defense was scrapped on Thursday, insiders told Variety NBC, Universal Television and Wolf will start work on a new spinoff to replace it. For the Defense was ordered to series earlier this year, but no casting was ever announced.

For the Defense was announced back in May, with Carol Mendelsohn (CSI) serving as showrunner and executive producer. The show was set to focus on the defense attorneys instead of the prosecution, as Law & Order shows have done in the past. "We spent the last 30 years on shows that played offense. Now it will be great to play defense, and being able to do it with Carol is an honor and an opportunity for both of us to do television that hasn't been done before," Wolf said in a statement when the show was announced.

NBC later scheduled the show to kick off Thursday nights, which would have been dominated by Law & Order. The network will air Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 23 and Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 2 this fall, starting on Thursday, Sept. 23. The Blacklist will air in the 8 p.m. ET slot vacated by For the Defence, beginning on Oct. 21. (Wolf still has two nights on broadcast networks all to himself this fall. CBS is running three FBI shows on Tuesdays, while NBC will run all three Chicago shows on Wednesdays.)

This isn't the first time NBC hyped up a Law & Order spinoff that eventually never happened. Back in September 2018, NBC announced Law & Order: Hate Crimes, which was given a 13-episode first season. SVU showrunner Warren Leight was credited as co-creator with Wolf. The show was slated to air during the 2019-2020 season, but the project was delayed in March 2019. In June 2019, Leight said the show was moving to NBC's new Peacock streaming platform so they could cover hate crimes without dealing with broadcast standards. The show never ended up airing though.

There have also been plenty of Law & Order ideas that did reach the airwaves but ultimately failed. Law & Order: Trial by Jury was a series that focused on the "order" half of the show, but lasted just one season in 2005-2006. Law & Order: Los Angeles failed to connect, even after a mid-season cast shakeup, and also aired for one season. In 2017, Wolf tried to capitalize on the true-crime craze with Law & Order True Crime, an anthology series that would focus on one real crime per season. The only season that aired focused on the trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez. True Crime was never formally canceled, but there has never been an announcement on Season 2.