The Bear season 4 won't be premiering before 2025 like fans hoped

On Emmy nominations day (July 17), The Bear earned a record breaking 23 nods but, unfortunately, that exciting news wasn't followed up by an announcement that season 4 will be landing on Hulu earlier than expected. That's been a major question since word began circling that the dramedy's third and fourth season would be filmed back-to-back.

When asked about the production schedule during a press conference for season 3, the following exchange happened between the show's stars:

Jeremy Allen White: We did something like that.
Ayo Edebiri: Yeah, a little version of it, sort of. But not exactly.
Jeremy Allen White: Not exactly.
Ayo Edebiri: Is that helpful for journalism?
Abby Elliott: You'll have to find out.

At the time, no one knew what they meant when they suggested that they'd somewhat stayed in continuous production between the two seasons. But now FX CEO John Landgraf has shed some light on the situation in an interview with Variety. Not only is filming on The Bear season 4 not done yet, it's not possible for the series to come back any earlier than 2025.

"We couldn’t bring it back sooner because of all of the film projects the actors are on right now. We started a show with a with a team of great actors. Now we have a show with a team of movie stars. They do have to go back for a chunk of production. And we actually haven’t seen all the scripts yet. We’ve seen most of them, but not all of them. "

Landgraf didn't elaborate on just how much of the fourth season still needed to be shot or when production is set to begin again, but he did say: "I can’t say for sure, but my guess is it’ll come back the same time next year."

Meaning we won't see The Bear again until June 2025 at the earliest. That's the typical release window for the show and one the FX boss is very proud of in the age of streaming. Outside of broadcast and cable, most television shows are averaging about 2-3 years between seasons. This dramedy is the rare streaming original that you can count on returning every year and in the same month.

It mimics, as Landgraf notes, what people like about the traditional annual release schedule, the ability to have a period of the year you can look forward to because your favorite show will be back. For fans of The Bear, that's the summertime and in the sixth month of the year. Hopefully, they'll be able to hold onto that for the fourth season in a row.

On whether or not season 4 will be the dramedy's last, Landgraf didn't have a definitive answer. Though he did state that's not his call to make.

"We really don’t know. These decisions are really creative decisions. It was Sterlin Harjo who made a decision that Rez Dogs was a three-season series. And so it’s really Chris [Storer’s] decision on The Bear. It’s about, how much more story does he have to tell? I mean, obviously, I’m hoping he has more than one more season of story to tell. But not to the extent that if there was one great season or three mediocre ones, I’d rather have one great one. You just have to follow the creative."

Based on his words, we could see The Bear reach season 5. Personally, I don't see the show going any longer than five seasons tops. Not only because of how much television has changed when it comes to a show's lifespan but also due to it being clear we're coming up on the final stretch of the story being told. We'll keep you posted as more news comes in. Stay tuned to Hidden Remote!