the courtroom

Judge Judy Is (Reportedly) Dead. Long Live Judy Justice.

Photo: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

No, that’s not someone peeing on your leg and telling you it’s raining. Those are tears, real human tears, falling from your eyes after reading the news that daytime television mainstay Judge Judy will end after the show’s upcoming 25th season. Host Judy Sheindlin made the announcement during her visit to Ellen, which will air her interview on Monday. To hear Judy tell it, CBS was ready to pull the plug after amassing decades of profitable reruns, but that doesn’t mean Judy herself is ready to go quietly into that good night(court.)

“CBS sort of felt, I think, they wanted to optimally utilize the repeats of my program,” Sheindlin explains. “Now they have 25 years of my reruns. What they decided to do is sell a couple of years’ worth of reruns. But I’m not tired, so Judy Justice will be coming out a year later.”

Sheindlin is famously the highest paid personality on television, currently pulling in $47 million a year. In 2017, CBS purchased the entire Judge Judy episode library, which might be why the network is now willing to let the woman behind the gavel move on.

As for where Judy Justice will air, Sheindlin is declining to say. “I can’t tell you yet,” she informs Ellen. The show’s final destination probably depends on whether Judy Justice is a hyper-violent drama about a cyborg Judge Judy seeking vigilante justice in a dystopian future like we pictured when we saw the title, or, more likely, a slightly tweaked courtroom reality show. Either way, Judge Judy should absolutely be given a robotic gavel hand that turns into a grenade launcher.

‘Judge Judy’ Is (Reportedly) Dead. Long Live ‘Judy Justice.’