In Brief: Grammy ratings up; Spin-offs of ‘Dexter’ and Billions’ coming, and more

Sunday night’s Grammy Awards telecast on CBS drew over 12.4 million viewers, according to time zone-adjusted fast national ratings from Nielsen and including streaming on Paramount+ and CBS apps — a three-year audience high for the awards show. That makes the Grammys the most-watched network primetime program this season, with the exception of sports. Sunday’s show put up the best numbers on CBS since the 18.69 viewers for the 2020 telecast, which was the last ceremony held before the COVID-19 pandemic began…

Sony Pictures is eyeing an I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot with original stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. in talks to reprise their roles, according to Deadline. The 1997 film, about a group of teenagers stalked by a killer, one year after a fatal accident on their graduation night, grossed $125 million worldwide and helped launch Hewitt and Prinze Jr.’s careers, as well as those of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe. Plot details for the reboot have not been revealed…

The soon-to-be-named Paramount+ on Showtime is expanding two of the cabler’s popular dramas — Dexter and Billions — with “multiple offshoots in the works,” sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. As many as four Billions spinoffs are in the works, including Millions and Trillions. Billions now ranks as premium cable channel’s longest-running scripted original series. Showtime also has gone straight to series on a prequel series: Dexter: Origins, which will tell the origin story of Michael C. Hall’s serial killer and a new version of Dexter: New Blood, depicting “the ongoing emergence of Dexter’s son Harrison”…

Showtime has given a straight-to-series order for a political thriller tentatively titled The Department, according to Deadline. The series, executive-produced and directed by George Clooney, follows the “‘Bureau of Legends,’ responsible for training and handling deep-cover agents on long-term missions in areas with French interests. Living under false identities for years, these agents’ missions are to identify and recruit good intelligence sources”…

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