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Comedy Central Confirms 26 New Futurama Episodes
e9th was one of several readers to write with an update to the Futurama rumors we discussed earlier this week:
"TVWeek reports that 20th Century Fox Television and Comedy Central have officially confirmed a deal for 26 new episodes of Futurama, due to the strong ratings of its reruns and feature-length specials. Matt Groening is quoted as saying, 'We're thrilled Futurama is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000.' According to the press release, the episodes will begin to come out in mid-2010."
Why does it take Comedy Central to re-animate the corpses of great shows?
the two movies that followed the series felt like the writers and voice actors were out of practice. That said, this is Good News! indeed.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I'm convinced Futurama was not canceled for any reason within its power. The powers that be at Fox seemed to think that moving its time slot around so no one knew when it was on was a great idea. I don't know how the politics work there within the scheduling and piloting areas of Fox but someone must have had a problem with Futurama.
... you're going to planet X to deliver package Y" with optional information about said planet. From there, they could go anywhere. Using a mechanism like this was a lot like Star Trek (although better than just Trek's "for the sake of discovery" in my opinion but I know that's a monkey shit fight I can't win). And Star Trek (or some form of it) is still going strong on that same idea. Hell, I'll bet there's some pulp sci-fi series in nickel paperback form long ago that used the idea that the universe has an uncountable number of planets so there's an uncountable number of plot lines to keep my readers entertained and me employed.
... from the town sundial to the quarry to the statue of Jedediah Springfield to Springfield Gorge to the old folks home to the ... they have stretched that town out so badly that recent episodes seem to seep more into neighboring towns for a desperate change of pace. You wouldn't have this problem with Futurama.
The show had a great format. You had a mechanism for sending the crew anywhere where Professor Farnsworth would walk in saying "Good news everyone
And Futurama is animated so you're not limited by budgets and CGI.
I think the writers did a good job of keeping multiple plot arcs up and concentrating on them every now and then to keep the fans happy. I think the first movie (Bender's Big Score) was a clear indication of how much they value development in plot arcs and connections between episodes.
To compare it to a show far past it's prime and in a similar format: The Simpsons. The Simpsons has explored every possible crevice and building in Springfield to center on
Sure, Futurama could jump the shark. But I bet it will last a lot longer than other series if given the chance. Sure, Futurama could end up worse than before the break--much like Family Guy. But I think Family Guy depended too much on edgy questionable humor and when it came back and still had that humor it just wasn't as shocking. And the gimmicks and long digresses got old and tedious. I don't think Futurama relies on these as much as Family Guy.
Anyways, that's my largely opinionated two cents about a show I knew nothing about when it was airing and found it immensely enjoyable years after it was canceled. That's the only show I can say that about. The movies were ok but nothing like the TV formatted shows. Here's to hoping it's just as good as when it left off Season Four!
For the record normally I would complain about lack of originality in a situation like this but after watching some new shows on TV I don't care. Who ever is pitching/accepting these shows like The War at Home and 'til Death should be shot.
My work here is dung.
Over the past 15 years I've watched as my life become harder to live due to a series of set backs that are out of my control. I sat down and reasoned out suicide as being the best solution to my permanent problems. Now that Futurama is coming back on TV I figured that I should just sit around until it goes off the air again. I hope it's as good as it used to be.
Huh. Now my post shows numbers for the ol and round bullets for the ul. When I posted it, it showed just L shapes for both. Maybe someone saw my post and fixed the CSS. Either that, or it's a massive coincidence since it's been broken for several weeks (months?) and was fixed within two hours of my post...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'll have to disagree with you there. In my opinion the final half of the season was easily some of the best Whedon I've ever seen. The first half was crap, but it was worth it to get to the second half.
It would be hilarious if the first episode of the relaunch had all of the characters drawn as if they were many years old trying to play the part of their younger counterparts. Also, maybe there would be a new kid who was added to freshen things up. He would supposedly be around Fry's age, but the 'actor' would be 30 years younger. Their mission would end up restoring the glory days.
One of the things that was cool about Futurama was it broke the Simpsons 'family animated sitcom' mold. Giving it a different feel and of course many different options for the writers.
Since there is always the comparison to Family Guy keep in mind that Family Guy was just another family animated sitcom. In fact many people have gone far out of their way to point this out as if other non-animated sitcoms have not been doing the same thing for many years. We just had virtually no other points of reference when looking at prime time animation.
As an example look at American Dad. It's a family animated sitcom but it changes up the: dad is fat and does wacky stuff all the time, mom is very well intentioned and ignores all the flaws of her dysfunctional family, kids do stuff, blah blah. Instead, due to some...suggestions...from Fox they made the dad a wacky wing-nut, the mother a blond ditz wing-nut enabler, and the kids who do stuff with the added fact that like the Simpsons the girl is the token left wing voice. (And I don't want to get into the politics of American Dad but there is plenty more to be said about it's dynamic but that is beyond the scope of what I'm trying to say here. Suffice to say I find it hilarious how they have left politics alone in S4.)
The uniqueness of Futurama's sitcom environment made it very open and different than the other 3 prime time family centered ones. We can all only hope that the writers working on it's return will embrace that as well as the original ones did.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I watched the first couple episodes and stopped. Finally, over a month later and after a couple of episodes had already expired on Hulu, and another was about to expire, I decided to watch it and found it was actually good. And they got better after that. The problem is, I expect most people watched the first couple of episodes and stopped before the show actually started any signs at all of being any good. It's actually quite good, but it takes a while to get there...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."