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Billy West Says Futurama Might Return To Fox For 6th Season

MajikJon writes "After strong sales of the straight-to-DVD Futurama movies, Fox is reportedly considering bringing back Futurama for a 6th season. This according to Billy West in a recent statement at the Anime Supercon in Florida. Here's me with my fingers crossed."

11 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Re:As a fan, I hate to say this by Gat0r30y · · Score: 4, Informative

    You know, you might be right. But if they bring it back, I'm still gonna watch it.

    --
    Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
  2. Re:As a fan, I hate to say this by eldavojohn · · Score: 2, Informative

    But if you can't do better than those terrible new DVD releases ...

    Eh, I'm not going to insert my own opinion, merely point out that Beast with a Billion Backs was 12th and 6th on the charts for DVD sales according to Billboard. Bender's Game was 10th for a week while Bender's Big Score was only 37th and 11th for its two weeks.

    Their sales have put them on charts so while I'm not disagreeing with your assessment, someone out there enjoys them.

    Honestly, the DVDs are far above 99% of what's on TV right now so ... I say bring it back--it's a great idea financially.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  3. Re:As a fan, I hate to say this by gornzilla · · Score: 5, Informative

    Matt Groening isn't the best. The Simpsons was really helped by Sam Simon (who was fired or quit) and James L. Brooks. If it wasn't for Brooks and Simon, it wouldn't have even made it to teevee.

  4. Re:As a fan, I hate to say this by SpeZek · · Score: 1, Informative

    They just completely ignore it in the new movie

    No, now the ships are using Whale Oil, as evidenced by the fuel indicator in the Planet Express Ship.

  5. Re:Oh my god... by wgoodman · · Score: 2, Informative

    He also scored with her in this reality.. He just skipped past it because of the cronotron radiation.

  6. Re:As a fan, I hate to say this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Unimportant spoiler:

    They DON'T ignore it, at one point in the movie they're running low on whale oil :>

  7. Re:As a fan, I hate to say this by Jurily · · Score: 2, Informative

    Beast with a Billion Backs sucked

    No, it made me feel bad about ever liking Futurama.

    I had to rewatch Seasons 1-3 to get rid of it.

  8. Re:As a fan, I hate to say this by Jonny_eh · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why is everyone talking about '3' DVDs?

    There's a 4th one you know, it just came out yesterday, and I liked it a lot.

  9. Re:Zoidberg! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Zoidberg? Are you kidding? Ugh. You mean stinkers like Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?, A Taste of Freedom, and (trying to hold back my puke) That's Lobstertainment. Ugh, some of the worst episodes right there.

    The best episodes are the Fry-centric episodes like Parasites Lost and The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings (among the many others, I Dated A Robot, etc.).

    Don't date robots!

  10. Re:Futurama yes! Fox No! by LostCluster · · Score: 3, Informative

    Fox's good series but low ratings failures were due to giving the network over to sports instead of recorded programs.

    Fridays during the late 90s and early 2000s, many affiliates carried local baseball games during primetime and they ran the Fox Friday lineup in late night after the local news. So, any series schedule for Friday would get weak rating numbers, and therefore be canceled as a flop.

    Sundays were troubled by NFL runovers and the fact that The Simpsons had to start on time at 8pm or not at all, meaning that in many cities the 7:00 and 7:30 programs would be pre-empted by the game being shown in the late afternoon slot. This doomed Futurama because it couldn't be found in a consistent slot.

    Another strike against Futurama is that it had to run with an alternate opening due to a showing the Planet Express ship crashing into a large screen, which was considered too close to a reminder of 9/11/01.

    However, Fox has fixed all of these problems. Time has passed so the opening is more acceptable. The Friday baseball pre-emptions are now a thing of the past, Fox has let baseball move to regional cable channels, some of which it controls. The Sunday problem has been solved by a postgame show called "The OT" that stations join in progress as the game ends, and runs until 8pm. So, the only thing that can be pre-empted by football is football talk.

    Fox is now no longer killing good shows because they're not getting the numbers due to Fox's own mistakes. They've solved that problem.

  11. Re:Futurama yes! Fox No! by GeckoAddict · · Score: 2, Informative

    Bad examples:
    FX - Owned by Fox
    USA - owned by NBC/Universal
    TNT and TBS - Owned by Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner

    These channels certainly have the cash behind them if they need to take a risk on a new show (and for some of these, I have to believe the station is taking a loss in order to gain market share for other shows), although I suppose the same could be said for Comedy Central (part of Viacom). The problem is getting the show approved and getting a budget to do it from the higher ups...