Warren Leight Leaves Criminal Intent
Deadline Hollywood, 5.31.08
By Nikki Finke
Within days of USA Network renewing Law & Order: Criminal Intent with an order for 16 episodes, the series has just lost its showrunner. I'm told Warren Leight has left to be the showrunner of HBO's In Treatment. It's a big blow to Bonnie Hammer, promoted two months ago to head the newly created NBCU Cable Entertainment & Cable Studio. The former USA Network/Sci Fi Channel boss had been in the midst of hammering out a new deal with Leight, under whose leadership CI was the top drama series in basic cable primetime for the fourth quarter, more than doubling USA's audience in the 10 p.m. Thursday slot from the same period the previous year. Full article
posted by thereel @ 6:37 PM
10 Comments:
Trcyk63 said, Now that Warren Leight is leaving Law and OrderCI there may not be a season8 because Bonnie Hammer will have to find someone else that can do the job that he did so well with the episodes and keeping the audience watching and keeping CI's ratings up. I hope that she doesn't decide to cancel it because of him leaving. Tracey
I guess this is kinda good news?
Warren Leight was great, but he'd experiment too much. He removed the ching-ching cards, he added music into the show as background music like other TV shows do (it's not a common Law & Order thing -- if it does happen, it's short, and the music is emanating from the background), he tried to be too stylistic with his filming (the swings at the end of Senseless), etc.
He was great, as he allowed more personal scenes, but I'd like to see someone like Stephanie Sengupta take over as showrunner, as she's transferred from CI to the mothership with Rene Balcer two-years-ago, and I'm sure she's more than capable to be showrunner for CI, since she knows the characters, and has worked on the show already for such a long time. She also wrote some really good mothership episodes in the last season.
I have mixed feelings about this news too. I wasn't happy with Rene Balcer leaving and Warren Leight stating Goren was no longer going to be "the smartest guy in the room" - that comment always stuck in my craw. But Warren Leight did deliver a stellar season and did lead the troops on the picket line during the writer's strike. I admire him for both.
At least I hope a writer is promoted from within - someone who knows Goren and Eames well. Maybe Diana Son? Or as animelee suggested Stephanie Sengupta?
As VDO Vault said today on the USA board, "It is hard to be a CI fan." We really have been put through the ringer waiting for new shows and now this.
Sunday cannot come fast enough for me.
If true, its a terrible blow, and reminds me of the sudden way Balcer left after Season 5.
Leight gave the episodes creative renewal and new energy.Endgame was a pinnacle of achievement by anyones standards.
The silence around this is deafening.
Leight was a great writer, but a poor show runner. As Animelee said, his changes did not fit the show.
Another question...
Eric Bogosian is an old friend of Leight's. Does he go with Warren?
C.I. HAS been renewed. End of story.
Rene left, Warren took over, there are other people, like Diana Son and Charlie Rubins for a start, who are perfectly capable of running the show, OR maybe they'll bring in someone new. This is NOT the end of the world!
I wish we knew how the actors felt about this-
Regi.
I disagree with ebrown.
Some may not have liked his artistic direction, but those in production were clearly very happy working with him in it. We have the verbal evidence of Noth,Erbe and VDO for that in various interviews.Noth and VDO in particular spoke about their support.
Alot of the fansites were very supportive of his style too if you look at them.Bonnie hammers comments too were always very positive.
Julie martins comments about how he improvised on sets and her obvious delight in this also demonstrates his egalitarian style as a showrunner.
the evidence suggests he was well thought of in both his roles.
Artistic direction is an eternal debate that will never satisfy everyone.But even Balcer at the time said there had to be change for LOCI to survive.
Its a testament to his ability that leight took over the showrunning job as an emergency and made it work with very little time to prepare.
I wasn't talking about how happy the cast and crew was with Warren Leight, how egalitarian he was, etc. I was talking about Leight removing the locale cards, eliminating the ADA role, using embarrassingly superfluous camera tricks, substituting pop music for Mike Post's score, disregarding procedural accuracy, and replacing the complexity and intelligence of previous seasons with sensationalism and melodrama. Change is one thing, but Leight rendered the show all but unrecognizable.
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