There had been a lot of evidence that seemed to indicate the widely panned second season of True Detective spelled the end for the drama series on HBO, but now, it appears that isn't the case after all, and the cable channel is still considering bringing the show back for a third season at some point.

New HBO programming chief Casey Bloys addressed the show's fate while speaking to reporters at the Television Critics Association's press tour over the weekend, and admitted that he was still in talks with creator Nic Pizzolatto about creating a new season, and was still considering it a possibility at this point, but with some new changes in effect compared to how the second season was run.

"It is not dead," he said. "I talked to Nic about it and both Nic and HBO are open to another season. I don't think Nic has a take and he's working on some other projects. We're open to somebody else writing it and Nic supervising it. It's a valuable franchise, it's not dead, we just don't have a take for a third season yet."

It was previously believed that Bloys was planning on focusing his energies on other wildly successful programs for the channel, which continued to bring in viewers and not suffer from being ripped apart by critics, like Ballers, Silicon Valley, Veep and Game of Thrones. However, with the official end of Game of Thrones coming after season 8 concludes in 2018, there may be time to try and work on something new for True Detective.

The blame for the show's second season being panned so horribly was assumed by HBO exec Michael Lombardo earlier this year, as he explained that it became clear that Pizzolatto was rushed into creating a second season after taking a long time to craft the wildly successful first season, and that forcing him to produce faster was probably the wrong move to make.

"The first season was extraordinary television. The second season-and you may disagree with me-but a lot of people think it was an inferior version of the first season. What are the lessons you take away? I'll tell you something, Our biggest failures-and I don't know if I would consider True Detective 2-but when we tell somebody to hit an air date as opposed to allowing the writing to find its own natural resting place, when it's ready, when it's baked-we've failed," he said.

"And I think in this particular case, the first season of True Detective was something that Nic Pizzolatto had been thinking about, gestating, for a long period of time. He's a soulful writer. I think what we did was go, 'Great.' And I take the blame. I became too much of a network executive at that point. We had huge success. 'Gee, I'd love to repeat that next year,'" he continued. "Well, you know what? I set him up. To deliver, in a very short time frame, something that became very challenging to deliver. That's not what that show is. He had to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Find his muse. And so I think that's what I learned from it. Don't do that anymore."

Season one starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. Season two saw Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, Taylor Kitsch and Vince Vaughn take on the leading roles.

Tags
True detective, Hbo, Television