EXCLUSIVE: Fans of Blue Bloods will be happy to hear that Donnie Wahlberg’s character, Danny Reagan, one of the show is most adored signatures, will return to CBS with a new “Blue” police series set in a new location. For the 2025–2026 broadcast season, CBS has ordered Boston Blue (working title), a universe extension of the venerable Blue Bloods, straight to series.

Wahlberg will return to his role as NYPD Detective Danny Reagan in the new series, which was written by Brandon Sonnier and Brandon Margolis (S.W.A.T.). He will join the Boston Police Department and be teamed with Detective Lena Peters, the oldest daughter of a well-known law enforcement family, after he arrives in Boston.

CBS Studios and Jerry Bruckheimer Television, a studio, collaborate to produce Boston Blue. Alongside Wahlberg and JBTV’s Jerry Bruckheimer and KristieAnne Reed, Sonnier and Margolis will executive produce and act as showrunners.

Boston Blue was not intended to be a Blue Bloods spinoff, even though the show is producers, CBS and CBS Studios, had considered spinoffs from the well-liked procedural drama, such as one in which Danny Reagan would have moved to Texas and another starring Tom Selleck.

It began when Sonnier, Margolis, and JBTV pitched a drama about a Boston police family whose oldest daughter is paired with a recent LAPD transfer to CBS Studios and CBS. According to sources, the network used that pitch to order a script.

The script was positively accepted by the studio and the network, whose executives saw the Boston family police drama project as a chance to incorporate a character from the New York family cop drama into the Blue Bloods universe.

Wahlberg is a native of Boston, therefore CBS and CBS Studios focused on Danny Reagan and asked the Boston Blue creative team to switch the LAPD transplant character to Danny, an NYPD one.

I have heard that at the time, Wahlberg was contacted about playing the part again, and the network even requested backup scripts. With him on board and based on the creative, CBS decided to bring Boston Blue to series for the 2025–2026 broadcast season after his deal to star and executive produce just closed.

The network and its parent company, Paramount Global, have made it a top priority to find a means to grow the Blue Bloods franchise; at the firm’s shareholder meeting last June, possible extensions were hinted at. With a loyal fan base, the popular series, which starred Selleck, Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, Will Estes, and Len Cariou, concluded its 14-season run in December. Danny eventually proposed to Det. Maria Baez (Marisa Ramirez), his longtime NYPD colleague, in the series finale.

The NBC Writers on the Verge program was where Sonnier and Brandon Margolis got their start. They created and oversaw L.A.’s Finest, the Sony and JBTV-produced Bad Boys spinoff starring Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba, for Spectrum following five seasons on the enduring NBC series The Blacklist. On the forthcoming third season of Fox’s procedural series Alert: Missing Persons Unit, the two are executive producers.