HBO's "True Detective" has drawn a lot of buzz about its next season in the wake of the first season's smashing success. The last episode of Season 1 drew such a large streaming audience it crashed HBOGO. The huge following prompted the network to quickly approve a second season, which is expected to be released in January 2015 at the earliest.

Season 1 featured Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as the lead actors, playing Rustin Cohle and Marty Hart, respectively, and also included Michelle Monaghan, Michael Potts and Tory Kittles.

Season 2 Spoilers

The producers of the show revealed that both McConaughey and Harrelson are not included in the new season, but HBO has started casting the new season and rumors suggest they may have chosen Brad Pitt to play one of the lead characters. The producers are thinking of casting a female lead with Pitt to play one of the detectives in the new season.

A few other names have been suggested for the new season including Nicolas Cage, Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston and Christian Bale if the lead roles will still be a two-male pair. Anthony Hopkins, Will Smith, Samuel L. Jackson and Javier Bardem were also supported by fans. As for the female lead, Amy Adams, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain and Selma Hayek have all been suggested.

The second season script was once again writtten by Nic Pizzolato. In an interview with HitFix, Pizzolato said that Season 2 is about "bad men, hard women and the secret occult history of the United States transportation system."

When asked to comment on the finale of Season 1, Pizzolato said, "It's informed exactly one thing. It's that I realize I need to keep being strange. Don't play the next one straight."

The writer told Entertainment Weekly that he has already started writing the script for Season 2.