American Horror Story Renewed for Season 4 by FX

FX has announced that American Horror Story has been renewed for a fourth season, which will premiere sometime in the fall of 2014. The current season, which is currently outpacing American Horror Story: Asylum by +83% in Total Viewers and +71% in Adults 18-49, is set to air its finale on Wednesday, January 29th.

“Put simply, Ryan Murphy is a master television producer,” said John Landgraf, CEO, FX Networks and FX Productions. “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.”

What wasn’t revealed in the renewal announcement, though, was the creative direction of the fourth season, as American Horror Story reinvents itself every season in terms of story, setting, and character while keeping its cast mostly the same. Creator Ryan Murphy has indicated that the focus of the next season could be revealed in one of the final episodes of Coven, possibly in a similar way to how Asylum and Coven were revealed in their prior seasons, respectively. In response to lower ratings for Asylum, the auspices behind American Horror Story decided to make Coven lighter and more comedic in tone, but since the show tries to look and feel completely different from one season to the next, there’s a strong likelihood that we see American Horror Story edge back toward the darkness it thought it escaped.

American Horror Story: Coven airs Wednesdays at 10:00 on FX. You can check out a preview of tonight’s episode, where Zoe discovers a new power and Fiona clashes with Myrtle over control of the coven, below.

What have you thought of American Horror Story: Coven thus far? How should the miniseries reinvent itself for a fourth season? Who would you like to see join the cast next season?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G_MwARgyjg