Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Yes! More Bender in the world is a good thing.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
I have to say, this is a relief, if it actually happens, there may be hope that Arrested Development, too, may be saved from the fires!
... :/
Too bad it doesn't seem to work for sci-fi (see also: Firefly, Farscape)
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
I don't know. I think that cancelling them increased their appeal and popularity.
huh?
Why don't you get Groening for a Slashdot interview?? Then we'd have the inevitable "I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter" posts for a month.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Just one comment:
Firefly --> ~12 episodes
Futurama --> 72 episodes (or 36 1-hour episodes to be fair)
This may be a reason why futurama is more lucrative.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
the worst thing a cartoon or animation can do is start to repeat itself. I think think of a few huge ones that have fallen into that trap and should have been put down years ago.
I went back and watched most of the run of Futurama recently when my little brother got into it, and I noticed something interesting: the final season is by a good margin the best. A lot of the memorable episodes are there. The Sting, where Leela gets stabbed by that bee, Fry dies, and then Leela starts to lose it -- was it just me, or was that actually a real trip of an episode? I remember stumbling out of that one feeling a little freaked out. And I'm a fan of weird.
And Requiem for a Dream, Monster, Boys Don't Cry -- I thought those were sad and depressing to watch. But they don't hold a candle to the end of the episode with Fry and his dog.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
There isn't much to be said:
Production costs: $40 million US. Gross: $25 million USA. Business Data for Serenity
There are some serious discussions going on right now over at fireflyfans.net of raising money for a straight to DVD series. This is not like the SaveEnterprise campaign, sine the fans are not very keen on getting the series back on to network TV.
The idea was born out of a (I believe) New York Magazine article, where Firefly was singled out as a series that had the ability to make this happen. The method is similar to to how some OSS programs operate. Once the creator of the program gets X amount of money, they release the program. Same would apply here. Sixteen episodes budgeted at 2 million USD a piece, plus creation costs for the DVDs, shipping etc. Ballparking it at $40 million USD to produce, and charge another $29.95 USD to sell it.
It's unclear whether or not Fox has the rights to a straight to DVD release, since they hold the broadcast rights to new episodes. But, since these are not being broadcast, this may be able to be sidestepped, or possibly royalties or some such would need to be paid to them. It's all in the wording of the contract. There has also been talk about rasing the money to purchase the rights from FOX, if they are willing to sell.
Mal: "What happens when the money's good enough?"
Jayne: "Well, that will be an interesting day."
Yes it would.
Because teenage pranks are fun when you're about to die!
Futurama is the perfect show to prove to the content providers that TV is a useless medium for selling content. they need to make futurama available as a pay per episode download on itunes and in a higher resolution format. I would gladly subscribe to individual shows Monthly than pay Cable Tv to shovel 900 channels of garbage at me.
Futurama would be one of those shows that even at $3,99 a download would sell at insane levels and make mattand company vastly more money than they could ever get on a TV network and in the same setup become the pioneers that pavedthe way for the future of television.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just shows that Fox doesn't have a clue in marketing and keeping good shows.
I remember that I could never find Futurama on the air because they kept shuffling the time slot and then when I did find its timeslot, it would appear in its timeslot sometimes. Not to mention that they quit advertising the show on their station. Fox kept on showing advertisements for Oliver Beene and John Doe (I think, it's been a few years).
Now Fox is doing the same thing with my favorite show, Arrested Development. I heard they had changed it to Monday, so I waited to watch it on Monday. Oh wait, not *that* Monday. The monday it did appear, I missed it because I didn't know. You would think that then on the following monday it would be shown... nope, something else was on. I think it's been on Monday for the last two weeks but it's hard to plan to watch it on a regular basis (on TV) when they keep on changing the timeslot. I don't think any of the other networks do this, they'll show a rerun if they don't have a new episode in that timeslot. We'll, hopefully Showtime will pick it up. If that happens then I just might get cable.
It just shows that Fox isn't looking for good shows but for instant hits.
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
Just plain old internal politics.
As it was explained to me:
If you're the new programming executive you need to prove your predecessor was an idiot. So, you take a show, move it around and preempt it until it tanks then replace it with something of your own.
Now you're the hero for replacing that "bad" show.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
Not exactly... I know I'm being pedantic, but the Futurama eps are approx. 22 minutes each, so more like 24 1-hour eps.
But yeah, Futurama is popular and I really hope that Fox will soon get their heads out of their asses and realize that one of their biggest mistakes (next to that of their existance and probably some others I don't know about) was to cancel Futurama.
It's ridiculous that a show can be held hostage in such a manner. I'm sure some other network would have loved having the Futurama crew on board.
And, let me just point out that for the first time ever, my sig is actually on-topic! :-)
"Live free or don't."
I thought the author of that line in the show clearly had never played blind chess, where the rules are all the same, but indeed you are not allowed to see your opponents pieces. Every time you commit a move, a moderator does the following:
1) if the move is illegal, the moderator makes you take it back and tells you why (ie exposes your king to check)
2) if the move captures an opponents piece, he tells you which one
3) if the move puts your opponent in check he tells you so
4) if the move achieves checkmate he congratulates you
It's fun. Chess fans should try it.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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.
You clearly do not understand how mass media works. The invisible hand is always there, but you have the positions all wrong. You are not the customer and the shows you watch are not the products being sold. The customers of the TV networks are the companies that buy advertising during their shows and the product being sold is you and your time. The shows are just a way of luring you and me into being a product for them to sell. If we were the actual customers of the networks then they'd be sending cute sales chicks around door to door asking us to pay them some money.
With that in mind, decisions about what shows are on a network are based solely on ad dollars and have nothing to do with DVD sales. If a show is doing well on DVD then those cute sales chicks who go around asking for dollars from advertisers can point to the sales figures and say "hey, a lot of people like this show and if you pay us money to show it then all those people will see your ad" but that is as far as it goes. And excellent DVD sales will not keep a show on the air if sponsors are not willing to keep paying for ad space.
For all the ranting about the Firefly movie being a "bomb", I was happy with both show endings. Farscape and Firefly were "post-Star Wars" / "post-Star Trek" sci-fi, with good casting, reasonable story arcs, and somewhat original 'verse settings. While I could see additional extentions, they were both good endings in my book.
Restarting "Futurama" seems like a much easier time, however. Much of the magic to both live shows were the casts; the longer they remain apart, the less the energy of the original show would remain. Here's where I offer Star Trek movies I to VI as evidence; "ST-IV / Save the Whales" was the last one with any real energy and style for me, before the TNG cast took over. And they are having the same problem at this point.
Finally, I find I watch the "Futurama" reruns on the Comedy Channel more than the "Simpsons"; the humor seems gentler, less harsh somehow. So adding more shows to the pile is a "good thing" for me, if the group that put the first shows together are still able to recapture the "team spirit" that made me want to watch in the first place.
old_fortran
The big "but" that you left unstated is that they can't fall into the trap that the newly restarted Family Guy has found - rehash all the old jokes ad naseum. What was funny as an original joke will always be funnier as a running gag! What a bunch of morons. Running gags only work when you tie their hands and put a handkerchief in their mouth... oh wait, that was the Muppet Show...
I think it was because the lack of control by Fox over the show. Seth McFarland had much more power than Matt Groening did over the Simpsons. Groening also had much more control over Futurama than he had with the Simpsons. There wasn't as big of an incentive for network execs to promote these shows as their own baby projects.