Cupertino may enter the limelight with TV show

Cupertino is about to join the rarified list of California cities — including Beverly Hills, San Francisco and Santa Barbara — that have given their names to TV shows.

“Cupertino” will premiere on CBS in the fall of 2026. The show is billed as a “David vs. Goliath legal drama set in the heart of Silicon Valley,” and follows a lawyer who refuses to back down after he’s cheated out of his stock options by his former tech startup employer.

Actor Mike Colter is leading the series and is best known for the show “Evil,” which ran on CBS and the Paramount+ streaming service from 2019 to 2024. “Cupertino” is being produced by married couple Robert and Michelle King, who created “Evil” along with other CBS shows including “The Good Wife,” “The Good Fight” and “Elsbeth.”

“I’m delighted to learn that ‘Cupertino’ will be a legal drama — something in the spirit of ‘The Good Wife,’ which happens to be one of my favorite shows,” Cupertino Mayor Liang Chao told San José Spotlight.

It’s unclear if the show, which got a green light from CBS last month, will shoot any scenes in Cupertino or be filmed entirely on a soundstage in Los Angeles.

City spokesperson Samantha LoCurto said the “Cupertino” production team has initiated preliminary outreach to the city, but she declined to provide further details.

The launch of the show, slated for a 13-episode first season, might be the driving force behind a proposed city policy to create a process for granting film permits in Cupertino.

At a Nov. 4 City Council meeting, Interim City Manager Tina Kapoor said Cupertino has received over a dozen inquiries in the past year regarding film production. A memo from city staff said those inquiries came from Yamaha Motor Corporation, El Camino Health, Italian television network La7 and CBS, among others.

“Over the past year, our communications team has received over a dozen inquiries,” Kapoor said at the meeting. “We’re handling them on an ad hoc basis right now. So we’re really hoping through this ordinance we can recover some staff cost and insure adequate protections for the city.”

Councilmembers initially approved the permitting policy at the meeting, with final approval scheduled for a Dec. 2 vote.

Wherever “Cupertino” is filmed, local boosters said the show could raise the city’s profile.
Claudio Bono, president-elect of the Cupertino Chamber of Commerce and managing director of the Cupertino Hotel, who ran for city council last year, said he’s thrilled the city will soon be in the national spotlight.

“As a hotelier who travels the globe to promote our city as a premier leisure destination, I’ve long advocated that Cupertino is so much more than its tech reputation,” Bono told San José Spotlight. “We are home to the world’s first trillion-dollar company, yes — but we’re also rich in history, culture and natural beauty.”

Although Cupertino isn’t yet a watering hole for Hollywood celebrities, the city has had at least one previous brush with movie fame: The 2015 biopic “Steve Jobs,” starring Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet, shot at the since demolished Flint Center on the DeAnza College campus in earlier that year.

Contact Mike Langberg at [email protected].