'True Detective' season 3 updates: Series delayed; expected to come in 2018

Fans of HBO's "True Detective" might be sad to hear about the reports saying that season 3 of the hit crime drama will be arriving in 2018 because the show's creator, Nic Pizzolatto, will be busy working with Robert Downey Jr. for his own HBO series, "Perry Mason."

Sportsrageous reports that "Perry Mason" will be in the same vein as "True Detective," seeing as they are both crime dramas. Pizzolatto will be having minimal supervision over his first show while he is busy writing for "Mason."

Pizzolatto is actually an award-winning novelist and short story writer, and he is known for his novel "Galveston" and his collection "Between Hera and the Yellow Sea." He is also the screenwriter for the Hollywood remake of "The Magnificent Seven" starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt. With titles like that under his belt, Pizzolatto is definitely one busy artist.

Rumors were already rampant about the delay of the third season of "True Detective," but Pizzolatto's involvement with RDJ's project confirms it. The next season is said to have only eight episodes, and since the series is an anthology, the book is wide open for any actor to jump in on the season.

The eight-episode treatment seems to put the show in the same boat as HBO's "Game of Thrones." The show's seventh season will hit next year, and the season has been reportedly cut down from its 13-episode order to as few as eight episodes. This is probably a move to allow better production quality within each episode, so "True Detective" fans can expect that the showrunners are planning the same thing for their show.

Fans should also be happy that the show is getting delayed instead of getting canceled. "Vinyl," Martin Scorsese's drama about the rock and roll scene in the 1970s, was canceled after one season, much to the dismay of some devoted fans of the music scene.

The third season of "True Detective" is expected to arrive in 2018.