‘True Detective’ Season 3 Happening At HBO With Mahershala Ali?

It seemed as if “True Detective” was a done deal at HBO after a disappointing second season that left fans less than satisfied with how the story turned out, but a new report seems to indicate that the people behind the show are gearing up to once again pitch a potential third season of the anthology series to the cable channel.

According to The Tracking Board, the Academy Award winning actor for “Moonlight,” Mahershala Ali, is in talks to star in a potential third season of the show, and is expected to close a deal sometime soon. The show has not officially been greenlit for a third season yet either, though, according to The Hollywood Reporter, creator Nic Pizzolatto has been working hard on a new season with new collaborator David Milch.

Read: HBO Exec Discusses “True Detective” Season 2 Failures

If Ali were to sign on to a starring role on the show, it would follow the trend the series has taken when it comes to casting big names and getting them attached to the show. The first season, which aired in 2014, starred Matthew McConaughey (who won an Oscar that year for “Dallas Buyer’s Club”) and Woody Harrelson ( a two-time Academy Award nominee). Season two, which aired in 2015, starred Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Taylor Kitsch and Rachel McAdams ( an Academy-Award nominee for “Spotlight”).

Ali’s own past credits besides “Moonlight” include turns as Remy Danton on Netflix’s “House of Cards” and Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes on the streaming service’s “Luke Cage” as well.

Though Ali would potentially be a huge get for “True Detective,” it is still unclear if the show will be picked up again for a new season. After massive success with both fans and critics during the initial season, the second season failed to impress either, with convoluted storylines, excessively twisted plots, and an unsatisfying ending for most, among other issues. After it came to an end, nothing was ever mentioned regarding a third season of the show.

In 2016, HBO's head of programming, Casey Bloys, was asked about the show’s fate since it hadn’t been included in the channel’s programming lineup that year. At the time he assured that while there hadn’t been anything greenlit yet, there was always room to reconsider bringing the show back if the right story was written.

“It’s not dead,” he said at the time (via Deadline). “We are hoping for a third season. It’s a very valuable franchise for us...I’m not sure we have the right take for a third season yet.”

Read: Could “True Detective” Be Renewed For Season 3?

HBO President Michael Lombardo also said in 2016 that he blamed himself for the show’s dismal second season, saying he placed too much pressure on Pizzolatto to produce a second season so quickly after the first, a mistake he said he realized later since he had taken a much longer amount of time to conceive and conceptualize the first season.

“Our biggest failures—and I don’t know if I would consider ‘True Detective’--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."

“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 added. “...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.”