New Futurama Movie Coming in June

walterbyrd writes "Bender's Big Score is just getting set to air on Comedy Central, but already Fox has announced that the next straight-to-DVD Futurama film/series is coming in June. The title? 'The Beast with a Billion Backs.' 'In what Fox is calling the most tentacle-packed Futurama epic, space itself rips open, revealing a gateway to another universe. What lies beyond is a mix of horror and love as the Planet Express crew encounters a repulsive, planet-sized monster with romantic intentions. The second feature-length Futurama film will be followed by at least two more movies from series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. The show's entire voice cast and most of its main writers have returned to help revive the series, which FOX cancelled in 2003.'"

Comments

Better in half-hour installments

[aapold]

Bender's Big Score had many awesome moments, but it made me realize Futurama is better in shorter installments, it begins to wear at the interest after awhile. BBS is best watched in pieces IMO. of course straight-to-dvd you're free to do that. But I'd take a series of tales over a single long one I think. I do hope for another episode of "Everyone loves Hypnotoad" on the extras though.

Re:Better in half-hour installments

[Dachannien]

Actually, the "Anthology of Interest" episodes (you watched it - you can't unwatch it!) were among my favorites from the original series, indicating that extremely short episodes really provided the structure that helped the writers to shine. I wouldn't mind seeing more Tales! Of! Interest! included as bonus features on the upcoming DVDs.

I liked Bender's Big Score a lot better than, say, That's Lobstertainment or The Honking, but they really had some great episodes during the original run that'll be hard to top.

On an unrelated note, I seriously hope they improve the media and packaging quality for the next DVD. My DVD player is barely able to play the BBS disc I got (no scratches or anything, just can't seem to stay focused on the disc, especially layer 2), and the packaging only manages tenuously, at best, to keep the disc from falling out and rolling across the floor.

Re:Better in half-hour installments

[Joe the Lesser]

I noticed a similar issue with the Family Guy movie.

The sort of bit comedy that the Simpsons started is hilarious, but hard to maintain plot lines over twenty minutes because most of the humor is helped my plot twists, and they can only twist so much.

Re:Better in half-hour installments

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I'm shocked. Am I the only one who utterly loved it? It had a good involving storyline, it had real science fiction (the idea of time travel duplicates is something I have been wanting to see explored well in some story for a long time), and it even grips your heart at the end. Yes, short instalments are often quite funny (what if life were more like a video game?), but the ones I will remember the most were the ones with a good story. Also, you'll notice a lot of cool details during the second watching. That said, it was still pretty damn funny. I can't wait for more.

Re:Movie good, but...

[realmolo]

I have to agree.

Though, to me the major problem with "Bender's Big Score" is that they just threw everything but the kitchen sink into the plot. By the end of the movie, it's just a confusing mess of plots/subplots. The STRENGHT of "Futurama" has been that the plots are typically pretty tight. They ALWAYS had a good plot, and stuck with it.

Re:Movie good, but...

[surgen]

It does seem that they threw a lot into the plot but that is because it is four times as long. If you break the movie into four 22 minute segments you can see that each part stands on its own very well. I enjoyed that the plot was driving the story forward, if hadn't have had such an active plot the story would have just felt like was drawn out and moving too slowly. I think a lot of the anger at the plot is sparked when people try to wrap their head around the time travel and which instance of a charecter is which.

Subscription Model (Japanese OVA)

[StCredZero]

I agree. I wish they would release a dvd of four new episodes instead of a movie. The old series was as close to perfect as a show gets, IMHO. Lots of great animation went straight to video in Japan. (OVA = Original Video Animation) This was a way that new, innovative, and quirky shows could get produced even when no network execs had the courage or foresight to touch them. It's time we had more of that in North America! The technology is certainly there on the production side, with good software and commoditized hardware like scanners and digital cameras to support independent production. Someone should do a combination of Machinima + live action greenscreen.

If you want to see what amateurs can do with greenscreen, take a look at Star Wreck. Amazing what you can do with attention to detail, home made costumes and greenscreens, and a render-farm of 3 PCs in your living room. Oh, and it helps to have a hot girlfriend and goofy actor friends to play parts!

Re:And the winner ...

[Graff]

Random BedHead Ed had this to say:

... THE HYPNOTOAD. ... ALL HAIL ... THE HYPNOTOAD. I think the funniest part of that web page is the source code. Not only does it have an ASCII-art hypnotoad comment but it also uses the special iPhone icon setting.

What's funny about that last part? Well, pretty much all the content on the web page is in a Flash movie and the iPhone can't view it because the iPhone doesn't support Flash!

Kinda ironic that your iPhone bookmark will have a pretty icon for content it can't view...