Michele K. Short/FXFile this one under: "Hell." And: "Yes."
American Horror Story is better than ever this season, so we are very pleased with the news that FX has renewed it for a fourth installment. The miniseries will get the usual 13 episodes, likely to premiere in October of 2014.
AHS boss Ryan Murphy recently told us he'd love for the current Coven season, which is set in New Orleans, to continue on beyond this season, despite AHS being a one-season-and-done anthology series. So will season four continue on with the Coven story?
"Definitely not," a source who works on the show confirm to E! News. "It's not about witches. It's about something else entirely."
And though there were rumblings Jessica Lange might be leaving the show some time in the future, we can also tell you that at this point, she is definitely on board for season four.
"I'm going to do the next season of this and hopefully a play and then maybe one or two movies and then I think," Lange told HuffPo. "I feel like maybe then it's time to start something brand new in life."
What remains to be seen is whether FX will conjure up an AHS spinoff based on the current Coven season, which Murphy has discussed with FX CEO John Landgraf.
"[Coven] is my favorite season that we've done so far," Murphy told us recently. "Every season, I get very sad when I say goodbye to and we tear down those sets. But John Landgraf, to be quite clear, and I have always spoke about that this is a show that's sort of right to spin things off. To do something different. So we are talking about it. Because I mean, I love it. I love this season, I love the cast, and I love what it's about. I love that set more than life itself."
Landgraf praised AHS in a statement today, saying: "Put simply, Ryan Murphy is a master television producer. Time and time again he reinvents the form. What he, co-creator Brad Falchuk and their producers Dante Di Loreto, Tim Minear, Jennifer Salt, James Wong, Brad Buecker, Jessica Sharzer, Douglas Petrie, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Alexis Martin Woodall and the entire production team and cast responsible for the American Horror Story franchise have done is nothing short of extraordinary. Every year, they create a riveting and brilliant new miniseries. AHS: Coven is the best yet, and I have no doubt that the next installment will be even better."
Coven has been dominating the ratings, surpassing AHS: Murder House and AHS: Asylum with an average of 7.7 million viewers every week. We've seen tonight's episode, titled "Burn, Witch. Burn!", and trust us when we say the witchy fun and WTF moments continue at full force.
The season finale of AHS: Coven is set to air on Jan. 29. Murphy has hinted that he will drop a clue in the finale as to what season four is all about.