Oscar winner and
The Shield alum Forest Whitaker is set to take on another kind of police role, this time as squad leader Cooper for the
still untitled Criminal Minds spin-off set to be introduced via a backdoor pilot in the spring, much like
NCIS and
NCIS: Los Angeles.
Whitaker, who won an Academy Award for his role on
The Last King of Scotland in 2007, will play the dynamic, mysterious, and charming father figure on the spin-off, who will take the reins as leader of the new group of profilers who work outside the FBI bureaucracy. His character Cooper is a former star profiler in
Criminal Minds' BAU before going off the radar for the past eight years.
Whitaker, 48, is by no means stranger to the procedural/police genre. He played Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the FX series The Shied in seasons 5 and 6. He launched a vital investigation into the Strike Team, one of the most serious threats they ever faced.
Criminal Minds executive producer Chris Mundy wrote the planted spin-off, from a story by him and fellow executive producer and showrunner Ed Bernero.
As part of the deal that is nearing closure, Whitaker is expected to get a producing credit.
The other characters on the spin-off, all of which have yet to be cast, include Gina, a thirty-ish woman who escaped the streets of Baltimore, only to end up being sent back to them as an undercover agent; Mick, a 30-year-old ex-British Special Forces operative and a sniper who's as good with words as he is with a firearm; and Prophet, also in his 30s, a born-again African-American ex-con who's eager to get a clean slate after jail time.
The
Criminal Minds spin-off is set for a possible premiere in the fall.
Source:
The Hollywood Reporter(Image courtesy of IGN)