The Blacklist has been handed an early renewal. NBC has picked up the crime drama for Season 10 while Season 9 is still on the air, the Deadline reports.
Star/executive producer James Spader is set to return for the 10th season, which will be the second following the departure of both its female lead Megan Boone, who exited at the end of Season 8, and its creator Jon Bokenkamp. Also back for Season 10 as executive producer/showrunner is John Eisendrath, who has been on the series from the start, co-showrunning with Bokenkamp for the first eight seasons and serving as sole showrunner since the start of Season 9.
Spader announced the renewal during a visit to The Tonight Show to promote The Blacklist‘s return to its more regular Friday night slot. (You can watch the interview below.) The first nine episodes of this season aired on Thursday nights as a result of the Law & Order spinoff Law & Order: For the Defense falling through.
The Blacklist has been a solid performer for the network, which said that it had reached 22 million viewers across linear and digital platforms this season.
In the two years following the death of Boone’s Elizabeth Keen, Spader’s Raymond Reddington and the members of the FBI Task Force have disbanded – their lives now changed in unexpected ways and with Reddington’s whereabouts unknown. Finding themselves each at a crossroads, a common purpose compels them to renew their original mission: to take down dangerous, vicious and eccentric Blacklisters. In the process, they begin to uncover lethal adversaries, unimaginable conspiracies and surprising betrayals that will threaten alliances and spur vengeance for the past, led by the most devious criminal of them all: Raymond Reddington.
Diego Klattenhoff, Amir Arison, Hisham Tawfiq, Laura Sohn and Harry Lennix also star.
The Blacklist is produced by Davis Entertainment in association with Sony Pictures Television Studios and Universal Television. Eisendrath, Bokenkamp, John Davis and John Fox of Davis Entertainment, Spader, Lukas Reiter, Laura A. Benson, Daniel Cerone, Sean Hennen, Allison Glock-Cooper and T Cooper are executive producers.