UPDATE 21/4/22: Gather round Jonathan Groff stans and true crime freaks ‘cos rumours of a Mindhunter season 3 are abounding!
Mindhunter was officially put on pause back in October 2020. By that point loads of the core cast including Groff, Anna Torv and Holt McCallany had been released from their contracts.
Producer David Fincher told Variety that the 90 hour work weeks took a massive toll on him. It was also an incredibly expensive show to make.
Netflix never formally cancelled the show and a spokesperson told Variety “maybe in five years” the show could return.
Since then, there’s been a number of rumours that the show is coming back. The most recent round of rumours come from a source who spoke to UK publication Small Screen.
“I can’t tell you too much, but Mindhunter S3 is very much in the cards,” the source said.
“Netflix and Fincher are getting closer to agreeing on final terms.”
The source then referred to the fact Fincher openly spoke about having a plan for five seasons of the show.
“Netflix is keen to see him tell the story he wants to tell,” the source continued.
It’s particularly interesting this info is dropping now ‘cos we also have details about what a hypothetical third season would involve. One of the show’s directors Andrew Dominik told Collider season three would’ve been set in Hollywood.
“What they were going to do with Season 3 was they were going to go [to] Hollywood,” he said.
“It was all going to be about profiling making it into the sort of zeitgeist, the public consciousness.
“That was the season everyone was really waiting for to do, with when they sort of get out of the basement and start.”
Now that sounds like a pretty fucking good season to me. Please TV gods, answer us!
Jonathan Groff himself has also indicated he’s up for a return to Mindhunter. He briefly mentioned season three in an interview on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.
Jimmy Fallon asked if viewers were more likely to see him in Frozen 3 or Mindhunter season 3.
“I feel like even though those projects seem very different — Frozen and Mindhunter — I feel like a third Frozen and a third season of Mindhunter are equally possible,” Groff replied.
God knows I’d rather have Holden Ford than Kristoff from Frozen back on my screen.
Mindhunter fans, all is not lost. We must keep Holden out for a hero.
ORIGINAL 22/4/21:
SOUND THE ALARMS BECAUSE MINDHUNTER MAY NOT BE KAPUT AFTER ALL.
After cast members Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany and Anna Torv were all released from their contracts last year, it looked bleak, very, very bleak. Executive Producer, de-facto showrunner and the show’s most frequent director David Fincher also confirmed that the show was donezo due to its immense workload.
“It’s a 90-hour workweek. It absorbs everything in your life. When I got done, I was pretty exhausted, and I said, ‘I don’t know if I have it in me right now to break season three,” Fincher told Vulture.
He also added that it was “a very expensive show” and the viewership wasn’t high enough to justify those dollars. That’s supposedly why there wasn’t any push back from Netflix when Fincher made his decision to put the show on hold indefinitely.
BUT according to Small Screen a Netflix spokesperson said that there are talks happening with Fincher about a third season.
“It’s still very early days, but Fincher sounds more upbeat about the project,” the spokesperson said.
Originally it was thought that IF Mindhunter did come back it wouldn’t be for another five years. But with this new info it sounds like season three may be closer than we thought.
In the mean time though, Fincher revealed one of the possible endings he had in mind for the show.
“The hope was to get all the way up to the late ’90s, early 2000s, hopefully get all the way up to people knocking on the door at Dennis Rader‘s house,” he said.
Cast your minds back to season 1, and you might remember how Fincher opened almost every episode with a man named Dennis Rader (Sonny Valicenti).
For now that’s all we have. But if there’s anything we’ve learnt as a society it’s that burnout isn’t good for creativity or just good for us in general. So I say, Fincher take a break and when you’re ready to work on Mindhunter again, we’ll be ready.
