Considering the streaming success of Bridgerton Season 3, Netflix has become a must-have streaming service for romance lovers. Unfortunately, fans may still have to wait a pretty long time until Season 4 is available on the platform. This is because the Bridgerton showrunner just revealed how long production on the series actually takes, suggesting that it may be two years between seasons. While this is disappointing for many, it actually seems to follow a trend for streaming television.
In a recent interview with THR, showrunner Jess Brownell talked about making the most recent season of Bridgerton, and she touched on some rumors surrounding the next season and its focus. The producer was unable to offer many concrete details about future Bridgerton romances, except that she is proud of their writing process so far. Unfortunately, she was able to confirm fans are in for another long wait when it comes to Season 4, as it will likely take two years for the show to hit streaming. Brownell explained the reasoning, saying:
We are working to try and put the seasons out more quickly, but they do take eight months to film and then they have to be edited, and then they have to be dubbed into every language, and the writing takes a very long time as well, so we’re kind of on a two-year pace, we’re trying to speed up, but somewhere in that range
While this may seem like a long time for a television show, it actually is pretty on par with production timelines for other large-scale streaming series.
Game of Thrones, for example, was famously an undertaking with a very intense production. One battle scene in the final season took 55 days to film, and that was only a portion of a singular episode.
The Crown also notably had large gaps between seasons, which is most closely related to Bridgerton in terms of a production undertaking. The locations, costuming, and set pieces that fans love so much are not super easy to bring together, and for Season 4 of the Regency romance to match the quality of the previous seasons, it takes time.
This has become a major trend with streaming series as they've started upping the quality to levels that make shows feel like films. Previously when network television was the primary platform for series, producers tried to make as many episodes as possible for as cheap as possible. Think of Friends, Modern Family, or even Law & Order, which utilize only a handful of locations and rely mostly on dialogue and character interactions to create conflict. This made production speedy, unlike the high-budget, large-scale productions on shows now. As worldbuilding becomes a major centerpiece of a series, the longer production will take.
Unfortunately, for Bridgerton fans, it will be a while before they get to watch another Bridgerton sibling’s journey to find love. There has been a lot of speculation surrounding who Season 4 may focus on, whether it's the fiercely independent Eloise or the charming fan-favorite Benedict. And for now, fans will just have to continue speculating, as their questions may not receive answers for quite a while. Hopefully, the conclusion to Penelope and Colin's journey, which recently dropped on Netflix, will be enough to satisfy fans for a couple of years.
You can check out the first three seasons of Bridgerton now with a Netflix subscription. For more information on other shows returning to the small screen this year, make sure to consult our 2024 TV schedule.
