Prime Video’s Hit Thriller Could Run 20+ Seasons — And Finally Right a Big-Screen Wrong
Only two seasons in, Prime Video’s Reacher already looks built for decades, with a towering stack of Lee Child novels to mine and the kind of bulletproof procedural engine streamers covet—just look at the gold rush around franchises like Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta.
Prime Video is sticking with Cross. The thriller just scored a season 3 pickup after two buzzy seasons, and here is the fun part: this thing could run for ages. When a platform lands a sturdy procedural built on a massive book series, that is basically a renewable resource. Think Reacher. Think Scarpetta. James Patterson has been cranking out Alex Cross novels since 1993, and there are 33-plus of them waiting to be mined.
Where Cross is at right now
Aldis Hodge is back as Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist and detective in Washington, DC. The show plays him as brilliant and volatile. Season 1 leans into the aftermath of his wife’s murder and a temper that makes him unpredictable but very, very effective. As the series moves forward, Cross finds his footing again hunting slippery criminals, but the job stays messy: internal corruption and family complications don’t exactly get easier.
Why this could run for decades
Patterson’s Alex Cross books are mostly self-contained cases with a consistent lead, which is catnip for TV. There is range here too — different kinds of crimes, different kinds of bad guys, different corners of DC to dig into. If Prime Video wants longevity, the source material is already sitting on the shelf. They could even circle back to the 12th book, 2006’s Cross, and give it the makeover it did not get on the big screen.
Yep, Cross has a bumpy screen history
Hodge is actually the third actor to put on the badge. Morgan Freeman took the role first in 1997’s Kiss the Girls (which adapted the second book). That did well enough to spawn a 2001 sequel, Along Came a Spider — a slightly odd move, since that one was the first book published in 1993. Hollywood, timeline purist it is not.
Then came the 2012 reboot Alex Cross, with Tyler Perry in the lead and The Fast and the Furious director Rob Cohen behind the camera. On paper, it looked like a franchise starter, with ringers like Giancarlo Esposito and John C. McGinley in support. In reality, it opened against Paranormal Activity 4, lost the weekend, and could not make back its $35 million budget. Critics piled on, calling it Cohen’s weakest thriller; Perry got some praise, but the movie never found a pulse. The brand basically went into storage for a decade.
TV is where it finally clicks
Cross roared back in 2023 with season 1, and it actually felt like the novels fans have been reading for 30 years. Season 2 kept the momentum going, and now a season 3 renewal says the quiet part out loud: Prime Video has a long-haul thriller on its hands, and there is more than enough Patterson material to keep feeding it.
- 1993: Patterson launches the Alex Cross series with Along Came a Spider
- 1997: Morgan Freeman stars in Kiss the Girls (adapting book 2)
- 2001: Along Came a Spider movie arrives (adapting book 1 after book 2 — sure)
- 2006: The 12th novel, Cross, hits shelves
- 2012: Alex Cross movie (based on the 12th book) flops, losing to Paranormal Activity 4 and missing its $35M break-even
- 2023: Prime Video’s Cross season 1 lands and actually does the character justice
- 2024-25: Season 2 success leads to a fresh renewal — season 3 is a go, with Aldis Hodge returning
Bottom line: Cross has the cast, the juice, and a library’s worth of cases. If Prime keeps letting the show be a lean, mean DC crime machine, we could be talking about this one for a long time.