Clint Eastwood & Michael Connelly’s 110-Minute Mystery Thriller Introduces Bosch's Replacement

Published Sep 30, 2026, 9:30 PM EDT

After 18 months at Screen Rant, Guy became Classic TV Editor in September 2026, and specializes in leading features content about shows from decades gone by. Having written for and editing several TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include comedy, crime, historical drama, Westerns, and political thrillers.

Even Clint Eastwood’s most devoted fans might struggle to remember his 2002 movie adaptation of a novel by Bosch author Michael Connelly. The movie in question bombed at the box office, and has garnered a measly 52% score on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

Yet, this work of cinema might just hold the key to Connelly’s next big TV franchise, capable of challenging Prime Video’s Bosch and Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer for supremacy. Indeed, The Lincoln Lawyer was famously adapted for the big screen a decade before it became the hugely successful David E. Kelley TV series we know today.

The same could easily happen to Blood Work, since the movie’s central protagonist, played by Eastwood, would be the perfect lead in a show like Bosch. Terry McCaleb is an FBI profiler with character traits just as distinctive as Harry Bosch himself.

What’s more, McCaleb serves as a direct connection between Blood Work and Bosch. He and his LAPD counterpart inhabit the same fictional universe, and they even cross paths, in Michael Connelly’s 2000 novel Darkness More Than Night. It’s easy to see how he could front his own TV show, focusing on federal law enforcement rather than Los Angeles detective work.

Clint Eastwood’s Blood Work Is The Only Screen Release To Feature Terry McCaleb

24 years after its release, Clint Eastwood’s Blood Work is still the only screen release to feature FBI profiler Terry McCaleb. It’s a real shame there haven’t been others, especially because the movie does an underwhelming job of adapting Michael Connelly’s novel of the same name.

Connelly apparently hated Blood Work so much when he saw it that the adaptation motivated him to kill off its main character at the next possible opportunity. On the other hand, the movie’s failure is all the more reason for the book to be readapted for streaming, just as The Lincoln Lawyer has been.

Warner Bros. Pictures still own the screen rights to both Blood Work and Terry McCaleb as a character, which is why we don’t see him feature in Prime Video’s Bosch franchise. If he is to appear on the small screen, then, it’s likely going to have to happen on HBO and its streaming service, HBO Max.

However, with both Bosch and The Lincoln Lawyer undertaking franchise expansions at breakneck speed, HBO are already getting in on the act. They've acquired the rights to another eponymous Michael Connelly character franchise, Stilwell, and are currently developing a Max series for him entitled Welcome to Catalina. Nevertheless, a Terry McCaleb TV show remains waiting in the wings, ready to be developed by anyone at Warner Bros. who wants it.

Terry McCaleb Is Michael Connelly’s Perfect Bosch Franchise Successor For Streaming

Image via MovieStillsDB

One reason why Terry McCaleb would be the perfect franchise rival to Harry Bosch is that he’s such a unique character in the procedural crime genre. McCaleb and Bosch share parallels in many ways, but they’re also very different.

They’re both methodical, rigorous detectives who leave no stone unturned in their hunt for a lead. Yet, McCaleb is also outwardly softer, more empathetic, and more vulnerable than Michael Connelly’s best-known protagonist. Unlike Harry Bosch and The Lincoln Lawyer’s Mickey Haller, he’s more a straight-ahead “good guy” than an antihero.

*MGM previously optioned the screen rights to Connelly's sole Henry Pierce novel Chasing the Dime, but the movie was never produced.

McCaleb would also bring something wholly fresh to Connelly’s screen universe, given his special talent for psychological analysis, rather than the street-level detective work we typically associate with Bosch. His life-threatening medical condition would be a constant factor in his investigative work, too, bringing another kind of jeopardy into play.

There’s clearly an appetite for bringing McCaleb to the screen from viewers. The movie version of Blood Work is now a global streaming success for Netflix, demonstrating just how big a serial TV adaptation of the character could get.

A small-screen iteration of Terry McCaleb would have to be very different from the gritty figure Clint Eastwood turned him into, not least to get Connelly’s approval of the project. If the right people are behind the production, though, it’s easy to see how Blood Work’s central character would lay the basis for a hit streaming successor to both Bosch and The Lincoln Lawyer.

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  Bosch

  Release Date

  2015 - 2021-00-00

  Network

  Prime Video

  • 

    Harry Bosch

  • 

    Jamie Hector

    Jerry Edgar

  Bosch, based on Michael Connelly's novels, follows LAPD Detective Harry Bosch as he tenaciously seeks justice. The narrative delves into his past's hauntings and his commitment to a personal code, portraying the challenges he faces in balancing his relentless pursuit of justice with his moral convictions.