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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.'"

36 of 462 comments (clear)

  1. Good news everyone! by eldavojohn · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.
  2. In the words of Zapp Brannigan by Crudely_Indecent · · Score: 5, Funny

    "If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."

    --


    "Lame" - Galaxar
    1. Re:In the words of Zapp Brannigan by samkass · · Score: 4, Funny

      "In the game of chess, it's important to never let your opponent see your pieces."

      --
      E pluribus unum
    2. Re:In the words of Zapp Brannigan by Surt · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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
  3. nice. by joemawlma · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:nice. by Council · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      Fox cancels Family Guy, Futurama, and Firefly, each of which is critically acclaimed and later brought back in some way.

      Perhaps they should just realize that they should never cancel shows beginning with "F".

      --
      xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
    2. Re: nice. by EddieBurkett · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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...
      --
      The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
    3. Re:nice. by drsquare · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  4. Re:Firefly? by Blublu · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sure, we can get ALL the dead TV shows.
    Starting tomorrow...

    --
    meh
  5. I took the liberty... by n0dna · · Score: 5, Funny

    of fertilizing your caviar. -Dr. Zoidberg

  6. Cancel by kevin_conaway · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Cancel by geoffspear · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      --
      Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
  7. Bender Quote by waterlogged · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  8. Whew! by mister_llah · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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/
    1. Re:Whew! by wiggles · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I thought I heard that Arrested Development was being shopped to Showtime or HBO. Anyone else hear anything like this? That would be an excellent pick-up for either one of them, IMHO. If they can get good ratings from Curb Your Enthusiasm, they can get good ratings for AD.

    2. Re:Whew! by circa1979 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You heard correctly.

      http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?typ e=televisionNews&storyID=2005-12-14T084755Z_01_SCH 431622_RTRIDST_0_TELEVISION-ARRESTED-DC.XML

      Though I don't have Showtime, I and a lot of people I know would gladly change that for this show.

  9. Re:Firefly? by th1ckasabr1ck · · Score: 3, Informative
    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.

  10. Good News Everyone! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Good News Everyone!

  11. HEY TACO!!! by eno2001 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:HEY TACO!!! by dr_dank · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, the torrent of cliches would be too much. Almost as much as if Slashdot sponsored a Natalie Portman grit-a-thon to benefit St. Goatse's Home for Wayward Anuses.

      --
      Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
  12. Adult swim strikes again by squison · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  13. The only cancellation that I mourn more... by komodotoes · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...than Futurama's is that of Turbo Pascal.



    NeverEndingBillboard.com

  14. Bring back Futurama! by October_30th · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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?

    --
    The owls are not what they seem
  15. Re:...and syndication ratings. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Funny
    Maybe the reason it "failed" the first time was when Fox was airing it.

    You misspelt 'that'.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  16. Happy Xmas by BorgCopyeditor · · Score: 3, Funny

    -- 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.
  17. Re:Firefly? by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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.

  18. The Invisible Hand by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  19. Appropriate Family Guy Quote by glennrrr · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  20. Re:Firefly? by Kazzahdrane · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  21. NO! they need to tell Fox to F themselves. by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  22. Since we're doing it by Sylver+Dragon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Personal favorite:
    Speaker: "And the winner is ... Number 3, in a quantum finish."
    Farnsworth: "No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!"


    --
    Necessity is the mother of invention.
    Laziness is the father.
  23. Re:Firefly? by Lillesvin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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."
  24. Ignorance is not bliss by xant · · Score: 3, Informative
    --
    It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
  25. Re:Amusing out of context quote by milkman_matt · · Score: 3, Funny

    DVD commentary quote: "You wrote it, you can't UNwrite it!"

    Hah! Tell that to Lucas!

  26. Re:I Had..... by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Funny

    "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."
  27. Re:I am such a nerd by skintigh2 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Are you trying to correct me or out-nerd me?