Futurama Movie Set For November 27

kevin_conaway writes "TV Squad informs us that the new Futurama movie will be available on November 27. The show will return as a full-length, high-def film sold on DVD. It will be followed by three additional films, and each film will be divided into four episodes, each to be aired on Comedy Central. So, that's 4 DVD movies or 16 new episodes."

Comments

Oblig.

[Jack Malmostoso]

Good news everyone!

Re:Oblig.

[kimvette]

I, for one, welcome Groening as our overlord!

Matt & David & Co.: if any of you are reading this I want to say THANK YOU for hanging in there and making these DVDs happen. Here's to hoping to the return of Futurama to full production! :) I will be buying at least five or six copies of this to be handing out as gifts to try to help increase popularity of (and thusly demand for) the series.

Re:Oblig.

[Zackbass]

It's a suppository!

Re:Oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet zombie Jesus!

Re:Oblig.

[FlashBuster3000]

Tremble, puny earthlings. One day my race will destroy you all!

Re:Oblig.

[waynemcdougall]

The show will return as a full-length, high-def film sold on DVD.

But does it come in a convenient suppository format?

Re:Oblig.

[robably]

Just saying, but "Good news everyone!" was always the herald of really bad news. The tag should be !goodnewseveryone.

I'll get my coat.

Re:Oblig.

[Crunchie Frog]

Of course not. Your point? ... has obviously gone over your head.

Re:Oblig.

[omfgnosis]

People with Downs are not a race, but the term "mongoloid" is a racial term, which came to have connotations with Downs due to racist perceptions about biological traits of Mongols. Hence my fucking comment.

Re:Oblig.

[MutantHamster]

Just to give my 2 Quatlus on the issue of it coming back to "full production," I think the future (not to jinx it) may be kind of bright. Comedy Central bid really high for the rights to air episodes of Futurama and they are going to have the three movies broken up into a series of episodes. Given that it has a built in fanbase and is easily much higher in quality than the -- what, 10 new shows they debut each year that fail miserably? (I put my money on Lil' Bush, that Body Shop show, and that show about the Halfway House not coming back next year) My prediction if Futurama is going to be a smash for comedy central. And given that, it's not hard to imagine they'll want to comission a new season after that.

Re:Oblig.

[Darth_brooks]

Nixon: Thanks Morbo. How's the family?

Morbo: Belligerent and numerous

Re:Oblig.

[0xdeadbeef]

I was with you until you used a racist slur against people from Mongolia. Seriously, is that fucking necessary?

Oh, sure, you bleeding hearts whine about the poor oppressed Mongols now, but you'll be shitting your pants and crying for your mama when the horde is breaching your walls.

Re:Oblig.

[glindsey]

I think you mean "Sweet zombie (lips moving with no sound because network censors are too scared to say 'Jesus' on television)".

Re:Oblig.

[bigstrat2003]

That's good! Nixon's pro-war, and pro-family.

Finally

[gertin]

I missed Nixon.

Re:Finally

[friedo]

Arrooooooo?

Re:Finally

[User 956]

You're talking about this one, maybe?

Re:Finally

[k_187]

I believe that Matt Groening has said his favorite thing about Futurama was that he could still make fun of Nixon.

Finally

[Tykho]

Life is worth living again!

The Velour Fog

[jomama717]

I only hope Zapp Brannigan plays a major role - he steals the show in my book. Best Shatner parody ever.

Re:The Velour Fog

[mrchaotica]

Whaddya mean, "parody?" Zapp plays it straight!

Re:The Velour Fog

[vranash]

Nothing about Zap is straight, except MAYBE his bagging of Leela, and we all know that's only because he mis-interpreted being 'introduced to a one eyed friend' :)

Re:The Velour Fog

[jez9999]

You've GOT to be kidding me. Zapp Brannigsn is the most fucking annoying Futurama character.

Re:The Velour Fog

[kramulous]

And which one rocked your world?

Re:The Velour Fog

[technothrasher]

You've GOT to be kidding me. Zapp Brannigsn is the most fucking annoying Futurama character.

You're obviously confused and aroused.

Re:The Velour Fog

[Scott Wood]

Don't you just hate it when someone follows up a joke with another joke, and the humorless git who posted the original thinks the other person "just didn't get it"?

Oh thank GOD!

[doyoulikeworms]

That saved me a trip to the suicide booth!

Re:About damn time

[Rik Sweeney]

With the Simpsons ending

That's news to Matt Groening.

Re:misnomer

[bob8766]

I wasn't even going to bother getting this DVD, until I saw the Hypnotoad. Now I want 10 copies!

There will be a million unnecessary quotes, but...

[wizzahd]

"He'll be as strong and flexible as Gumby and Hercules combined!"

"Gumbercules?! I love that guy!!"

Yay

[Safiire Arrowny]

I'm happier than a snake in a sugar-cane field.

Re:misnomer

[Giddeon Fox]

Dvd's do not work that way. GOODNIGHT.

I never really..

[daydr3am3r]

..understood as to why Futurama never really took off to the mainstream as Simpsons did. Especially with the declining quality of the latter and the pretty much consistent high quality of the former. Must be the sci-fi tag that works like a repellant: "Oooh I want gonna laugh you know, but can't, it's sci-fi fer christ's sakes!..."

Re:I never really..

[dakameleon]

Lack of instant broad family appeal. The Simpsons has a character everyone can identify with, but Futurama has quirky characters that aren't as broad in their reach. I for one say Futurama is far funnier, but then I land smack-bang in its target audience, so I would wouldn't I.

Re:I never really..

[cowboy76Spain]

Because it was a little too geeky. Many of the jokes involved references to sci-fi movies or series, or scientific / mathematical theory (for example this list (spanish)). Most people won't get what is about a 7-11 clerk in a box, but you know it is the shield from "Dune". Or that a aleph-sub-0 cinema would have a countable infinite number of rooms.

Also, many of the jokes are more subtle than those usual to the Simpsons, and probably people won't want to look at a cartoon and have to think harder to understand its humour.

That said, I am already waiting on it.

Re:I never really..

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't see this answer in the previous replies to your question.

Fox set up Futurama to run at 7PM EST / 6PM CST. This was on a Sunday. Fox had football running on Sundays. With the exception of the west coast, most of the country never saw the show. Many times they joined the show already in progress at approx 20 after, so no one could know what was going on. Too many football games went past their time slot.

Plus, there are those that attended church on Sunday nights, so they never saw an episode. While living with the parents, it was a requirement to attend church on Sunday nights. I never caught the show unless I was sick or after I had moved out. So I never got a chance to see the entire run until Adult Swim started showing it.

So for a few, other things were going on on Sunday nights. For many others they never got a chance to see the show due to Fox's use of a 7PM time slot on a day they had football scheduled until 7PM, but typically it ran until 7:20.

No promotion behind it. All I remember ever seeing commercials for was Simpsons and King of the Hill.

Re:I never really..

[Chris Mattern]

Or one of my favorites, the horse race with the quantum finish. Prof. Farnsworth complained that they'd changed the outcome by measuring it.

Chris Mattern

Re:I never really..

[Lord Ender]

To fully appreciate Futurama

• You need to have read Asimov and Heinlein
  
• You must have seen pretty much all of ST:TOS
  
• You must have a college-level understanding of physics ("no fair! you changed the outcome by measuring it")
  
• You must have some understanding of American political history (President Nixon, etc.)
  
• You must know a bit about digital technology ("Don't worry, Bender. There's no such thing as 2.")
  
• Tou must not take religion too seriously ("sweet zombie Jesus!")
  

This is all true for the majority of my friends (who I know from engineering school or my career in software). However, my girlfriend's friends and my family can only check off one or two items on that list. They'll get a few laughs, sure. But even though The Simpsons and Family Guy are mediocre by comparison, those two shows never leave the majority of people thinking "I don't get it..." Futurama is just a masterpiece with a small audience, so it has less earning power.

The good news is that with Video over IP finally becoming cheap, HTPCs starting to catch on, and the popularity of DVD sales and rentals; the cost of entry to the TV show market is plummeting. The future looks good for shows like Futurama :-)

Re:I never really..

[hal2814]

I don't buy the you're-not-smart-enough-to-get-it argument. I can check off all of your points and never really cared for Futurama. I don't think the general dislike really has to do with the brainy jokes as much as it has to do with episode pacing and the main characters. It also had a weak first few episodes. Family Guy tosses in a lot of pop culture references that go straight over people's heads, but there are still plenty of people who enjoy the show. I know pop culture references aren't the same thing as scientific and political jokes but at the same time, there are probably more people who have taken college Physics than know who Gil Gerrard is. American Dad does the same thing with pop culture references but has a lot fewer fans. The problems isn't the jokes. The problem is the stories that hold the jokes together.

I did like a few Futurama episodes here and there but I would much rather be watching the Simpsons. And I did get it. Just like I got the Matrix sequels and I got the Doctor Who story Ghost Light. I'm not a fan of any though.

At last!

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, a good show on TV.

Random celebratory quote:

"The Elders tell of a young ball much like you. First he bounced 3 meters in the air... Then he bounced 1.8 meters in the air. Then he bounced *4* meters in the air."

Re:Any differences in the releases?

[AngryJim]

"Remember that it was the good DVD sales that brought Family Guy back."

Yeah and look how that turned out.

FINE!

[arcite]

Fine. I'll go build my own movie! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the movie and the blackjack! Ah, screw the whole thing.

Don't forget

[Dachannien]

Rumor has it that one or more of these DVDs will feature a very special full-length episode of Everybody Loves Hypno-Toad.

All glory to the Hypno-Toad!

Re:Don't forget

[RiffRafff]

Indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotoad#Hypnotoad

Networks

[Enderandrew]

Will the networks ever learn? They never marketed the show properly, and that is why it failed, just like why Family Guy failed the first time around.

Often they bail very early on a show that could be successful (like Drive this year, or Firefly) before they ever give the show a chance to succeed. If you don't market a show, people don't know it exists, and they aren't going to watch it. The weird thing is that there is quite a bit of start-up cost in getting an animated show running with an animation shop. 16 episodes is more than a half-season slate. I don't know why they don't just bring it back as a mid-season replacement on Fox, see how it goes, and hopefully just bring the show back for good?

Re:Networks

[jellomizer]

Well adds cost money. And they rather focus it to show that they know everyone will like. Futurama and Family Guy have a target audience (people who understand and appreciate sarcasm), a large majority of the population are kina luke warm about those shows Family Guy re-found success was that it gathered the Shock Watch Crowd (They Cant do that On TV) and the Sarcasm loving fans. Futurama is a lot less shocking then Family Guy so it looses that segment.

Re:Networks

[Enderandrew]

Ummm? The reason Family Guy was brought back was because it got HIGH ratings on Comedy Central and TBS, as well as HIGH DVD sales. It was canceled because it was poorly marketed, and no one saw it before it was initially canceled.

And take a show like Firefly. They only aired like 6 episodes total, in different time-slots, out of order, and never advertised the show. They aired a whopping 4 episodes of Drive, which got good reviews from pretty much every critic on the planet, and it was canceled.

I'm not a big fan of TV, and I was never a Whedon fan. I really hated Buffy and Angel, but Firefly was a damned good show. It sold like man on DVD to the point where they made a movie. Initial ratings aren't always indicative of the quality of the show. Jerry Springer was the highest rated show on the entire planet for a while, and so was Baywatch. And sometimes really good shows how poor ratings because no one knows anything about them. Even though Firefly sold well on DVD and was critically acclaimed, most people still haven't heard about the show.

That is poor advertising on the part of the network.

Jericho is another fine example. The network canceled it because of "poor ratings" and it had a huge fan-base who spent money out of pocket to take out an ad in Variety, and ship tons of peanuts to the network demanding the show be brought back. How were the ratings so poor with so many fans?

The Neilsen ratings often don't pick up on people who record shows with their DVR, and they also don't account for the people who watch the show on CBS.com so the ratings really didn't accurately reflect how large of a fan base the show actually had. If the networks were "experts" as you put it, they wouldn't lose so much money every year developing all these new shows that bomb. They wouldn't have canceled shows like Futurama, Firefly, Family Guy or Jericho in the first place when market demand for these shows was so high that they made more money after cancellation than before.

I know a guy (we're not close friends, but we have spoke on a few occasions) who wrote Grosse Point Blank. (Great friggin' movie) and he kept getting approached by the networks to do some TV work. He had some great stories. No one wanted to touch anything new, because it wasn't established and they had no way to determine if it would be successful or not. However they kept asking him to make "The Next Friends" show, because Friends was huge at the time. Every week when the new movies came out, whatever was big in the box office, they'd tell him to clone that.

Just because someone has money, that doesn't make them an expert. Far from it. As Kevin Smith said, "Hollywood is the only place where you fail upwards."

Re:Networks

[dcollins]

As Kevin Smith said, "Hollywood is the only place where you fail upwards."

Ouch. Clearly spoken by someone who's only worked in Hollywood. As distressing and counter-intuitive as it may be in this culture, that's how it works in every industry that I've seen (notably software, computer games). The only place I haven't seen that happen severely is in my college teaching gigs.

Re:misnomer

[Enderandrew]

I don't know why I even bother responding to an AC troll, but 480i is standard definition. Standard definition is also 4:3 aspect ratio.

A DVD can put out a native widescreen 480p picture, which was the bare minimum for the original HD specs. Most high-def TV shows are broadcast in 720p, and the new high-def movie formats are 1080p, but most high-def TVs can't even support 1080p. There is no single resolution that defines HD content.

Re:Translations?

[Da Fokka]

I hope not! There's nothing as annoying as downloading a movie to find out it's the french or spanish version. By the way, the very reason many spanish don't *speak* english while they can read and write it perfectly well is because they dub everything (badly, by the way). Watch the english version. It's way more enjoyable anyway.

Futurama Movie Trailer!

[Anonymous Coward]

The trailer shown at the comic-con is online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEtZHOj4vHo

Cancelled by the 'Box Network'!

Is "specialist" humour more "subtle"? IMHO, no.

[Dogtanian]

Also, many of the jokes are more subtle than those usual to the Simpsons, and probably people won't want to look at a cartoon and have to think harder to understand its humour. I'm not convinced; I think you've mistaken "specialist" humour that's more reliant upon knowledge of a particular area (including its pop-culture references) for genuine "subtlety".

The Simpsons *did* contain subtle humour in some areas. Whereas I feel Futurama's was very reliant upon parodying retro science fiction cliches and the old "aspects of present-day society given a futuristic twist" school of sci-fi comedy.

For my money, Futurama *never* felt like it would have the same universal appeal that The Simpsons managed so effectively. That's not to say that it was bad, but dakameleon put his (her?) finger on it very well when he said that The Simpsons had more characters people could identify with.

FWIW, I feel that The Simpsons actually has more creativity and freedom than Futurama. On first glance you'd expect the opposite, as being set in a fantasy future it has the freedom to do anything. In reality, it's quite tied by its retro sci-fi roots and reliance upon parody, both of which limit it creatively and in terms of audience appeal.

This probably sounds like I think Futurama sucks; I don't. It's all relative- but there are sound and legitimate reasons why it's not- and never will be- as well-loved as The Simpsons.

Re:No nightly reruns? a la Simpsons

[PopeRatzo]

Home Movies is retarded crap? You fucking Mongoloid.

Oh wait, we did that one already.

Never mind.

Re:Me too

[CrazyTalk]

Here's mine (from memory, may not be 100% accurate):

"God Lord! Thats over 150 atmospheres of pressure!

How many atmospheres can the ship withstand, professor?

Well it's a spacship. So anywhere between 0 and 1."

I think the number of people in the general population that would get that joke is one reason the series was canceled.

Mmm!

[Poromenos1]

Mod me insightful! BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

--HypnoToad

Great...

[knoll99]

Maybe Fox will prempt Futurama yet again by slipping some lousy NFL highlights video into the Futurama DVD jacket instead.

Terrific news about 16 new episodes though! Katay Sagal needs the work.

Kittens ...

[The Sith Lord]

... give Morbo gas.

Re:Me too

[IndustrialComplex]

Nah, the reason the series was cancelled was not because so few people got that joke, but that of those that did, 90% of them thought, "That doesn't make any sense. Does he mean Earth atmosphere? Or Jovian? Or Martian?" Did you really just claim to be too nerdy for the jokes from Futurama? Is that overachieving or underachiving?

Re:misnomer

[snicho99]

I don't know what the situation is in NTSC land. But here in Australian PAL land, (mu hah hah that's 576i or p for us), SD or standard definition is used pretty much interchangeably between EITHER 4:3 or 16:9 anamorphic.
Our SD digital transmission is anamorphic and our analogue broadcast is good old fashioned 4:3.
The parent poster is quite correct in that there is no standard resolution that defines HD content. It's a mess.
Seriously. You should try post producing a show that has been shot at 720p 29.97fps, but tagged as 50fps (over cranked), offlined at 576i / 50 (DV), and then conformed and onlined at 1080i / 50. It's enough to make you're head explode.
To be honest, it's just one of the reasons why us post production guys still have so much "love" in the "love/hate" relationship we have with film.

And yes you are correct. I'm completely off topic. But hey it's been a long day.

Re:misnomer

[thegrassyknowl]

But can we see Amy's obscene tattoo?

Re:Wrong again idiot!

[thegrassyknowl]

Who gives a fuck about the definition of HD in resolution terms.

As long as it's good enough to see Amy's obscene tattoo it's high def enough for Futurama

Re:About damn time

[sharkey]

Just like this fall's schedule.

Preview

[Nazlfrag]

Here's a sneak peek

Re:Me too

[proverbialcow]

Fry: Whatcha doing Bender? Building yourself a wife?
Bender: Part of one.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[bigstrat2003]

There's only one clone, Dwight is a natural kid. :P