Groening Confident on Futurama Relaunch

friedo writes "Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, says there may yet be hope for a renewed Futurama series, thanks to high DVD sales and syndication ratings. Comments from David X. Cohen: 'Three months ago, I would have said we were going to start tomorrow ... And one month ago I would also have said we were going to start tomorrow. So...my current estimate is that we're starting tomorrow.'"

Comments

nice.

[joemawlma]

The Family Guy came back because of the demand of the fans. Futurama can do it too! Too bad FOX wasn't smart enough to realize they should have never cancelled either of them. But what can you do? It's FOX.

Re: nice.

[EddieBurkett]

Considering the Family Guy is one of the funniest most intellectually humorous shows EVER

What??? I say this as a Family Guy fan, but there is no way that show can be considered intellectually humorous. True enjoyment does require a broad knowledge of pop culture (especially from the 80's), and a healthy appreciation of fart jokes, but intellectual? Futurama is intellectual. Family Guy... not so much. Intellectually??? I do not think it means what you think it means...

Re:nice.

[joemawlma]

I'm not all that suprised about some people disliking the new episodes. I guarantee there will be the same type of people complaining about how much better the old FUTURAMA episodes are compared to the new ones as well whenever they're released.

Re:nice.

[drsquare]

Family Guy has been awful since they restarted it. Be careful what you wish for.

Sometimes it's best when programmes are killed at their peak. Otherwise you end up with a slow, steady descent into medeocrity like the Simpsons.

Re: nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's physical comedy (well, the animated equivalent). Intellectual humor is Pinky and the Brain parodying the entirety of The Third Man because the guy who voices Brain sounds so much like Orson Welles.

Re:nice.

[Otter]

For that matter, the last season of Futurama (where it turned into Friends with a talking lobster) was also awful. I'd missed them all when they were originally on, but having seen them in reurns, it's like watching Ross and Rachel break up for the eleventeenth time.

Re:nice.

[X86Daddy]

Family Guy has been awful since they restarted it. Be careful what you wish for.

I've also noticed the show being more... shallow and repetitive, like it has lost something. However, I still tune in and still get some laughs out of it, because a crappier Family Guy is a whole lot better than most shows at their best, IMHO. Fox has to air *something*. I do miss Andy Richter Controls the Universe though...

Re:nice.

[Bastian]

I recall plenty of harsh reviews calling it a cheap Simpsons knock-off (which is funny because by that point the Simpsons themselves had already become that).

Also because about the only thing Family Guy has in common with The Simpsons is that it's animated and the male lead is a doofus.

Which also makes Family Guy a knock-off of Goofy cartoons.

Re:nice.

[Chaos Continuum]

What would you rather have:

1. 26 new Futurama episodes, where only 1/2 of them are good.
2. no new Futurama episodes.

I for one am all for the former.

Cancel

[kevin_conaway]

I always questioned the decision to cancel Futurama, it just seemed so...neutral. I wondered what made them do it. Lust for gold? Power? Perhaps they were all just born with a heart full of neutrality.

Either way, I'd be happy if they brought it back. I do wonder what the new episodes would be like though. The last episode kind of "wrapped" up the series.

Re:Cancel

[geoffspear]

It was cancelled because the 60 year old former football players talking about nothing and 15 minutes of commercials they had sharing a timeslot with the last 5 minutes of each episode got, for some reason they couldn't figure out, really bad ratings.

Don't get me wrong, I love football. I'd rather see the end of a good football game then the start of Pollyanna. Or even Futurama. But almost every week, the late Fox game would end before Futurama was scheduled to begin on the East Coast, and they still insisted on doing a meaningless postgame show afterwards. CBS, on the other hand, has been showing games that ended after 7:00 for years, and have always begun 60 Minutes immediately after the end of the actual game, without even cutting any of the show.

I was actually shocked this week when Fox managed to show all of it's Sunday night programming despite the President's address. I really expected the local news to come on at 10:00, forcing me to wait for Cartoon Network to air the end of American Dad in 2 weeks. Some idiot at Fox must have gotten replaced with a trained monkey or something.

Adult swim strikes again

[squison]

Yet another Fox series brought back from the dead by Adult Swim.

Bring back Futurama!

[October_30th]

The last episode kind of "wrapped" up the series.

Uh. I'm not really sure what you mean by that? What did "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" really wrap up?

Anyway, what I'm more worried about is the cast. Will all the wonderful voice actors be willing/available for a new series?

Re:could be grand or really lame

[Gulthek]

Jurassic Bark. :-(

Or maybe..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Or maybe we're tired of the last decade of Simpson style jokes set in different places(Family guy, American dad, Simpsons and Futurama) and they should try something new?

I'm surprized people haven't noticed that animation can be more than slap-stick with a morale tale attached, or a rip off of Japanese cartoons with the same depth as the 80s action figure whoring shows.

Re:Or maybe..

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Or maybe we're tired of the last decade of Simpson style jokes set in different places(Family guy, American dad, Simpsons and Futurama) and they should try something new? I'm surprized people haven't noticed that animation can be more than slap-stick with a morale tale attached, or a rip off of Japanese cartoons with the same depth as the 80s action figure whoring shows.

The Simpsons has remained popular for so long because it is funny, and because it is funny on multiple levels. The writers make a specific effort to write jokes that will last, and the majority of the humor does not depend upon knowledge of pop culture. Futurama makes that same effort, and combines it with a very scientific oriented intellectualism. When was the last time you heard jokes during prime time that relied upon the audience understanding the basics of quantum physics or for that matter even knowing what "pi" is? The family guy seem to be variations and/or attempts to discover the "formula" behind the Simpsons, but it is not a formulaic show; and I don't think it is fair to claim that because Futurama is animated, and shares many attributes with the Simpsons that it is unoriginal. Compared to the reality TV show of the week, or the latest sitcom about a family or a bunch of pretty and hip young people in the city, Futurama is a breath of fresh air. I just wish there was more television that was intellectual, rather than dumbed down for the least common denominator or reliant upon pop culture. Shakespeare's work is timeless because it was written to appeal to multiple audiences. He made sure to have his "high" humor witticisms and historical settings and references to appeal to his first run, patronage. He also made sure to include a fair share of physical comedy/action and "common man" type characters to broaden the appeal for presentations to the rest of the people. In 100 years people will still be able to laugh about quantum physics and pi, but they won't know or care who Ashlee Simpson is.

The Invisible Hand

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I disagree. In most markets the popularity of a product drives sales, which in turn determines if an item will continue to be available. Up until the publishing of series on DVD became popular, however, this mechanism was completely absent from the television market. Since no one could buy just the shows they wanted, decisions about whether or not to cancel a show were made based upon guesswork and Nielson ratings. In most cases this is still true. Now, TV executives are starting to get feedback via DVD sales indicating that they have been making really crappy decisions, including canceling some of the most popular shows. This is just the invisible hand of the market using greed to give people what they want. If we really want better quality shows, the answer is simple. Move to a model where shows are purchased individually and let the market decide. Personally, I'd much rather that greed drives TV executives to give people what they want, rather than greed driving them to make arbitrary guesses without any feedback.

As an aside, guess how many of the ten most popular TV series of all time were cancelled, or scheduled to be cancelled, and then saved at the last minute by some random event? TV executives tend to cancel anything different or novel, since it seems risky. DVD sales, like those of Futurama, are just a way for them to be told not to cancel something different, since it is in demand.

Re:Firefly?

[Browncoat]

Taking into account the type of movie it is and the complications of the entire thing....it did pretty well. 38 million dollars well. The show ended years ago, found life on DVD. The DVDs, however, aren't rented in most Blockbusters so people have to go and buy them, or find someone they can borrow them from. Considering its original run on Fox, where the episodes were aired out of order and were often pre-empted, a lot of people who tried giving it a chance during its run probably didn't want to revisit the show later, or had preconceived notions.

After several years of cult fandom, it's safe to say that there are millions and millions of Browncoats out there. The problem is, not all of them have access to the movie and that is a blunder by the studio. The wider the release, the worse the numbers are going to look if the movie doesn't perform well overall. "Oh, it only made ___ million in 3,000 theaters?" The movie only played in 2,189 U.S. theaters (according to boxofficemojo.com).

But it did open as number 2 on the opening chart. That's very important and will make a studio pay a little bit more attention.

Re:Whew!

[milkman_matt]

IMHO. If they can get good ratings from Curb Your Enthusiasm, they can get good ratings for AD.

Used to be the only thing that could get me to subscribe to HBO was the begining of a new season of Sopranos, but with Carnivalle, 6'Under (which I never saw, but everyone says is great.. I'd probably try it out if I resubscribed) Deadwood and Rome (which I've heard mixed things about) among others, it seems HBO has quite a run of good shows that combined actually make it worth $10/mo that Cox wants for it. I recently threw CYE onto the TiVo and was hooked, that show alone almost has me subscribing, but if they added AD, combined with the other shows mentioned above, they may regain me as a subscriber! ...now if only they could steal P&T:Bullshit from cinemax or showtime or wherever it ended up I would hardly need any other channels!

Re:The only cancellation that I mourn more...

[skintigh2]

Delphi forever

Re:Whew!

[FrozenOrb]

So many rumours regarding the future of Arrested Development--the cleverest comedy on TV at the moment imo. Here's hoping what you say is the case.

Re:Firefly?

[rekoil]

Oh, as if that's never happened before...