It’s an exciting week for fans of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ excellent BBC series Sherlock.  We learned yesterday that season three of the show is set to begin filming next Monday, with the three new installments slated to begin airing on BBC One this winter.  Now comes the even better news that Sherlock will be continuing even further, as star Benedict Cumberbatch has confirmed that he and Martin Freeman agreed to two more series, which means that season four is essentially guaranteed.  Hit the jump for more.

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Speaking with RadioTimes, Cumberbatch revealed that he has already signed on for a fourth series of Sherlock:

"We've agreed to two more series but I could get into trouble for saying that. All I know at the moment is I'm doing these three [episodes of the upcoming series] and another three."

Cumberbatch went on to say that he’d love to see the show even go beyond season four, but it all depends on the schedules of the very busy actors as well as co-creator Steven Moffat, who is also running Doctor Who.  Since the three 90-minute episodes of each season are pretty much feature films, Sherlock takes quite a long time to produce.  Filming for the first two episodes of season three begin next week and go up until the summer, at which point the actors will take a break (Freeman has extensive Hobbit reshoots to film) and then return later this year to film the final episode.

As someone who feared that Sherlock would be ending with season three, I’m incredibly happy to hear that the characters will be back for at least two more seasons.  The previous six episodes of the show are phenomenal and I can’t wait to see what season three has in store.

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