Fans of Mindhunter will be waiting quite a while before the series returns. The pending third season of the beloved Netflix procedural has been put on “indefinite hold” by the streaming service, according to a report from TVLine. The good news is that the show hasn’t been canceled, but executive producer David Fincher’s schedule i ssimply to busy to work on the show right now.
“David is focused on directing his first Netflix film Mank and on producing the second season of Love, Death and Robots,” a Netflix rep revealed in a statement. “He may revisit Mindhunter again in the future, but in the meantime felt it wasn’t fair to the actors to hold them from seeking other work while he was exploring new work of his own.”
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Additionally, the three principal cast members, Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany and Anna Torv, have all been released from their contracts.
The series was created by Joe Penhall, based on the true-crime book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit. It premiered in October 2017 to rave reviews, thanks in part to the show’s slow-burn storytelling. The second season premiered this past August.
Word about the show’s third season first started making the rounds in November, when it was reported that production was put on hold. Interview Groff gave to The Hollywood Reporter, he said that “talk of a third season of Mindhunter is on hold while [David] Fincher focuses on his next feature.”
The feature causing the delay, Mank, is Fincher’s look at the life of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz.
Given that the show hasn’t been canceled, it’s a safe assumption that Fincher will return to the series at some point in the future, especially considering that it was created around a five-season plan. Although McCallany told PopCulture over the summer that the original plan had gone a bit off the rails after the first two seasons.
“We did have a bible, a five-season bible, that existed when we began rehearsals for Season 1. However, I do know that many of the ideas that were contained in that have already been modified or abandoned. So there are a lot of different possibilities,” McCallany said. “One of the exciting things about working in series television when the writing is good, is that you are on this journey that nobody really can be 100 percent certain of what the destination is, not even the writers.”
The first two seasons of Mindhunter are available to stream anytime on Netflix.
