The wraparound jacket band on the 20th volume of Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist manga will confirm on Friday that a new television anime series is in the works. A new anime series was a topic of much fan discussion for several months, but it was thrust into a more public spotlight last month when a management document was purportedly leaked from the BONES anime studio. The document listed Fullmetal Alchemist animator Yasuhiro Irie as " Hagane 2 kantoku " (Iron/Fullmetal 2 director).

After the purported leak, BONES President Masahiko Minami posted an official statement that said that no file with this same formatted information existed within the company. When asked about the possibility of a sequel to Fullmetal Alchemist or Darker than BLACK (another BONES anime), Minami told ANN, "It hasn't been decided yet. We are interested in doing them. As original science-fiction works, they were extremely fascinating. With these kinds of dramatic story lines, I feel that there's a lot we could do potentially."

Viz Media will publish the 17th volume of the manga version in North America this October, while Funimation Entertainment released both the first television series and its theatrical movie finale.

Source: 2ch via Moon Phase Comments

Update: Background details added.