The Bear Season 3 will premiere on Hulu this June, FX chairman John Landgraf revealed at Friday’s Television Critics Association conference. Although there was plenty of discourse about whether or not the show should be released all at once—like its first two seasons—or weekly, Landgraf suspects the series will once again drop in on one day again.
Heading into Season 2, the creative team behind The Bear did discuss releasing the eight episodes over the course of several weeks. Ultimately, however, Landgraf and the other folks behind the hit show decided the first season’s rollout worked well.
“The first time I had an inkling of how big a hit The Bear would be was talking to a colleague the day after we dropped it. She said, ‘There are currently 100,000 concurrent streams right now watching the eighth episode of The Bear,’” Landgraf said. “When we came back for Season 2, since we knew we had a hit, we thought, ‘Should we milk it?’ But that was the wrong thing to do, to change it up for the audience.”
Landgraf says that big drop will most likely be the same rollout used with The Bear moving forward: “We decided not to change what we’d already set in motion, and I have no doubt we’ll keep doing it, because we did it in the past.”
The release month of The Bear is pretty much all Landgraf could tease about the upcoming season. All further details are being kept under wraps by creator Chris Storer.
“Given the way The Bear is made, I was as surprised as you when the Christmas episode came through the door,” Landgraf said. “I don’t get to do [that] very often in a network job, because I usually know everything in advance. I don’t really know what Chris has in store.”
Along with the weekly vs. all at once drop, another argument fans have had about The Bear is whether the series should be entered in the “comedy” or “drama” categories at awards shows. Landgraf doesn’t mind. He’s more pressed about the lack of recognition fellow FX series have received.
“I’ve come to accept that it’s wonderful when we have a deserving show like The Bear or [Welcome to] Wrexham wins,” he said. “There is no perfect process. I watched every movie that was nominated for an Academy award from the first year and forward. I think the Academy got the decision right one out of every three times.” Landgraf concluded, “I’m a little sore about Rez Dogs, but no system is perfect.”
