David Boreanaz’s 52-Year-Old Detective Series Reboot Gets Bonkers Budget Reveal

1 hour ago 15

Published Oct 7, 2026, 6:00 PM EDT

A cinematic obsessive with the filmic palate of a starving raccoon, Rob London will watch pretty much anything once. With a mind like a steel trap, he's an endless fount of movie and TV trivia, borne from a misspent youth of watching monster movies on TV, perusing the sun-faded goods at the local video rental shop, and staining his fingers with ink from the Video Movie Guide. Areas of interest include science fiction, film noir, horror flicks, '70s disaster pictures, Bond movies, '90s action, giant robots, dinosaurs, super heroes, and the exuberantly schlocky output of Cannon Films. He also enjoys both Star Trek and Star Wars when they're good, and maybe even more when they're bad. As a Canadian, he also has a vested interest in Canadian movies and TV shows, especially the cheesier ones dubbed "Canuxploitation."

An expert on Marvel Comics, he has also written for the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and is a member of the Marvel Research Team. He can frequently be found pontificating on comic-book continuity or bemoaning the misfortunes of the Toronto Maple Leafs on his Twitter account.

David Boreanaz is returning to TV next year in a revival of one of the most beloved detective series of the 1970s. Now, we have an idea of how much the series is costing NBC, which has ordered the reboot to series. This time around, hiring Jim Rockford is going to cost a lot more than $200 a day plus expenses.

The Rockford Files is a remake of the classic 1970s series that saw James Garner play Jim Rockford, a scrappy ex-con and private detective who made do with his wits, his Pontiac Firebird, and (very occasionally) the revolver he kept in a cookie jar. In the new reboot, Boreanaz will step into the role as a Rockford who was framed for a crime he didn't commit after exposing corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. Joining him will be Jacki Weaver (Yellowstone) as Rockford's trailer park neighbor, Felix Solis (Sirens) as his boyhood friend, a noted defense attorney, and Michaela McManus (Memory of a Killer) as Rockford's ex-girlfriend and only ally in the LAPD.

Thanks to a report from the California Film Commission regarding the state's film and television tax credits, we now know how much NBC is shelling out for The Rockford Files. For the first season of the series, which is expected to premiere next year, the cost ran to a staggering $69,673,000 USD, which then netted it a $21 million tax credit. That's a far cry from the relatively low-cost original series, which saved money with a clever trick; whenever the episode was running a little short, they'd pad out the episode's car chase sequences with extra footage. Car chases were a staple of the original series, which even led to one of Rockford's signature moves — a J-turn that saw the pursued car turn 180 degrees without stopping — subsequently being dubbed the "Rockford turn."

Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard

Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.

🐕Wick

🏁Fast

🧨Mission

🎄Die Hard

FIND YOUR FRANCHISE →

How does a room know you've walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.

ASomeone recognises me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said. BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something. CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived. DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it.

NEXT QUESTION →

It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.

AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started. BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup. CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving. DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more damage than I deal and I still don't go down.

NEXT QUESTION →

Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.

ANobody. I have contacts, favours and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone. BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them. CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself. DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist.

NEXT QUESTION →

It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you're actually made of.

AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction. BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line. CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me. DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building.

NEXT QUESTION →

There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.

AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it. BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion. CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorised last night. And then off a cliff. DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.

AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me. BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out. CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second. DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one bleeding on broken glass.

NEXT QUESTION →

Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.

ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since. BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything. CThe conviction that if I stop, people die. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else. DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defence.

NEXT QUESTION →

When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.

AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to. BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table. CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me. DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to kill.

REVEAL MY FRANCHISE →

Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.

John Wick

You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.

The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.

Fast & Furious

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.

This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

Mission: Impossible

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.

This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

Die Hard

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.

Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned, bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

Who Are the Creatives Behind the New 'Rockford Files'?

Jim Rockford (David Boreanaz) seen wearing sunglasses and walking beside a car in The Rockford Files (2026).

The Rockford Files is created and showrun by Mike Daniels, a veteran of The Vampire Diaries, Sons of Anarchy, and Shades of Blue; he was also recently reported to be working on a Fast and Furious TV series. He will also executive produce the series, alongside Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly. The series is a production of Universal Television.

The Rockford Files is in production. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.

Release Date 1974 - 1980-00-00

Directors William Wiard, Lawrence Doheny, Ivan Dixon, Jerry London, Reza Badiyi, Russ Mayberry, Jackie Cooper, Lou Antonio, Corey Allen, Jeannot Szwarc, Stephen J. Cannell, Alexander Grasshoff, Arnold Laven, Harry Falk, John Patterson, Stuart Margolin, Alexander Singer, Bernard L. Kowalski, Bernard McEveety, Bruce Kessler, Charles S. Dubin, Christian I. Nyby II, Dana Elcar, Hy Averback

Writers Gordon T. Dawson, Rudolph Borchert, Don Carlos Dunaway, Edward J. Lakso, David Taylor, Donald L. Gold, Rogers Turrentine, Walter Dallenbach, Lester Wm. Berke, William R. Stratton, Jo Swerling Jr., Leigh Brackett, Mitch Lindemann, Robert Hamner, Zekial Marko, Howard Berk, Shel Willens, Eric Kaldor, Gloryette Clark