Bones was a tremendously successful crime procedural that ended in 2017. David Boreanaz starred as FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, who worked extensively with forensic anthropologist (and crime fiction author) Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel). Bones and her team at the Jeffersonian Institute Medico-Legal Lab examined the bodies of possible murder victims for clues, and Booth and his team went out to catch the perpetrators.
That formula served the show very well; it ran for 12 seasons and produced 246 episodes in all. It was also driven by the slow-burning, will-they-won’t-they tension between Bones and Booth, who ended the show married with kids.
Might a revival be possible? ScreenRant‘s Ben Gibbons asked David Boreanaz directly. “What’s great about Bones is you can go in and out,” the actor said. “I always said that was the one show that I would definitely revisit, as far as going back, because it would be going back and seeing where these characters are now.”
Just getting everybody involved would be tricky, [to] be honest with you. I love Hart Hanson, the creator, and I talk to him a lot. So, never say never. Everyone’s so very busy with other projects right now, but it holds a special place in my heart. I love that show, and I love that character. So, who knows? We’ll see. [But] I’ve always been that type of worker. “What am I working on now? What’s the process?” I don’t look too far ahead, I never have, and I never look back. Emily [Deschanel] always laughs at me for that one. She’s like, “David, you never like reunions.” There’s a reason. I just don’t go back, and I stay really present. We always had this running joke about that for some reason. I think of Emily in regards to that all the time, because the two of us had such a great working relationship, and I adore her.
At minimum, it sounds like Boreanaz is open to coming back as Seeley Booth. In 2023, creator Hart Hanson also sounded open to the idea, under one condition. “I could see it. Of course, it all depends on David and Emily. Without both of them, no,” he said. “We have heard that they would not not be game, which is a step. The actors are going to say the truth, which is it depends on what it is, the scripts, what it looks like, if it feels right. They’re not going to do something just because it’s us.”
Hanson also advised that there were some rights issues that would need to be cleared up. “It’s complicated now because Fox broadcast Bones, but Disney now bought 20th [Century Fox], so they own [the show],” he explained. “It would take a million agents and lawyers to figure out who owns what and what platform it would show on… But we do keep talking.”
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and if enough of the original cast and crew are passionate about a Bones revival, there’s no reason it couldn’t happen sooner or later. There are plenty of shows that went off the air only to return years later. Why not this one?
That said, Hollywood’s fondness for reboots and revivals may actually get in the way of a potential Bones reunion. Boreanaz himself is getting ready to headline a revival of the 1970s detective show The Rockford Files, which premieres on NBC in Jan. 2027. If he could squeeze a Bones revival into his busy schedule, the fans would appreciate it.
