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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.'"
Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you ...
My work here is dung.
"If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."
"Lame" - Galaxar
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.
Sure, we can get ALL the dead TV shows.
Starting tomorrow...
meh
of fertilizing your caviar. -Dr. Zoidberg
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.
First thing I want bender to say when he comes back....
"Fox can bite my shiny metal ass"
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
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 love Firefly, but it doesn't have either one of those going for it.
I haven't heard much about the success of the Firefly movie (Serenity)...but I liked it completely... They didn't need to kill **** and the ******, but what the hell..it was still good.... They left it wide open for continuation.
(Above names censored for those who haven't seen Serenity yet...by the way, it's out on DVD TODAY....Someone is giving it to me for Christmas, so I have to wait 'til Sunday)
We can hope.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Good News Everyone!
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
Yet another Fox series brought back from the dead by Adult Swim.
According to the article, Futurama is getting resurrected because of high syndication ratings and a large number of DVD sales. I love Firefly, but it doesn't have either one of those going for it.
Firefly was (at one time) in the top 10 DVDs on Barnes and Noble and in the top 50 on Amazon, the only two major retail outlets to publish their sales statistics. I'd say that is pretty popular for the series. The movie did alright at the box office, but nothing spectacular. It certainly did well enough so that Whedon can get funding for another if he is so inclined. I doubt we'll see a revival of the series, but it is certainly not out of the question.
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
...than Futurama's is that of Turbo Pascal.
NeverEndingBillboard.com
NeverEndingBillboard.com
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?
The owls are not what they seem
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.
You misspelt 'that'.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
All existing Futurama episodes have been released on DVD. If you own all four seasons, that's the lot. There were four productions seasons. Fox spread them over five years of television and used "We've still got enough leftover episodes for a whole fifth year, we don't need more" as a partial excuse to halt production on the show.
qntm.org
Jurassic Bark. :-(
-- Fry's still outside? He'd better watch out!
-- Why?
-- I'm telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town!
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
"They didn't need to kill **** and the ******, but what the hell..it was still good...."
Snape and Dumbledorf? Yeah, I didn't see that coming, either.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Jhonen says no. He hates the assholes at Nick, and they pretty much hate him for being so anti-social. Google around a little.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
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.
Overtimes are pretty rare in the NFL, and when they do happen, they're usually not that long. The fact of the matter is that the TV stations only schedule 3 hours for NFL games, when the average game length is over 3 hours. On top of that, the games never start exactly at 4:15. It's a recipe for disaster, but it's no one's fault except for the networks.
Peter: Everybody I've got bad news. We've been cancelled.
Lois:Oh no Peter! How could they do that?
Peter: Well unfortuantely Lois, there's just no more room on the schedule. We just gotta accept the fact that FOX has to make room for terrific shows like Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That 80's Show, Wonder Falls, Fast Lane, Andy Richter Controls The Universe, Skin, Girl's Club, Cracking Up, The Pitts, Firefly, Get Real, Freaky Links, Wanda At Large, Costello, The Lone Gunman, A Minute with Stan Hooper, Normal Ohio, Pasadena, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddy, The Street, American Embassy, Cedric The Entertainer, The Tick, Louie, And Greg The Bunny....
Lois:Is there no hope?
Peter:Well I suppose if ALL those shows go down the tubes we might have a shot.
There isn't much to be said:
Production costs: $40 million US. Gross: $25 million USA. Business Data for Serenity
Serenity is currently sitting at #1 on Amazon.com's DVD sales chart. The Firefly series DVD set is at #6. Not bad for a cancelled TV show that by all account "nobody" saw. Joss Whedon has said time and again that the DVD sales for Serenity will decide on the fate of the universe the movie and series are set in. I'm a pretty pessimistic Browncoat, but #1 on Amazon for a film that had almost no marketing seems pretty encouraging to me.
I'm interested to know where you got this idea. Did Whedon say it somewhere? Or some other figure that would be in the position to know?
By all accounts that I've heard and read, Serenity was a bit of a bomb. According to Box Office Mojo, Serenity had a production budget of 39 million and hasn't even broken even yet. That counts world-wide sales and it's effectively done with its theater run. Marketing costs aren't factored in at all. Not breaking even doesn't sound like "doing alright" to me!
It's coming out on DVD very soon and it historically does very well in that market. I don't know enough about the movie industry to know if that counts when they decide on financing new movies, though. I'm crossing my fingers...
I am as much a Serenity fan as any other non-Browncoat Firefly fan, but until somebody in the know tells otherwise, I'm going to have to conclude the the movie was a flop.
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"
Personal favorite: ... Number 3, in a quantum finish."
Speaker: "And the winner is
Farnsworth: "No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!"
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
the DVD sales for Serenity will decide on the fate of the universe !!
You watched it! You can't unwatch it!
What would Brian Boitano do?
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."
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.
"Curse your sudden, but inevitable betrayal!"
Just wait long enough and Hollywood recycles them as big-screen remakes.
- chrish
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.
Really? I can't wait till they make Knight Rider the movie, only have K.I.T.T be a Honda Civic and Michael Knight played by Vince Vaughn.
Live forever, or die trying.
Try knowledge instead: http://www.bartleby.com/61/80/X0008000.html
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
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
"I Had..... SNOO SNOO"
Sorry to be pedantic, but technically you only had SNOO. There has to be 2 people for it to be SNOO SNOO.
"Derp de derp."
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...
Are you trying to correct me or out-nerd me?
Oh, as if that's never happened before...
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.