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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?
Lessons learned:
Thinking like this is what saved Dollhouse.
Tomorrow, you'll all be making a delivery to Ebola 9, the virus planet.
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.
It's been said before and is worth repeating: The movies were 45 minutes of material crammed into 90 minutes of airtime. The 22 minute format is the best way for the series to continue.
Now, if they can just treat the movies as non-canon, all will be right with the world. New Futurama is always welcome.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Too much time has passed.
The professor's probably dead by now, the kids will be all late teenagers, etc.
In Bender's case you can always put another guy in the costume but come on! Where do they expect to find another actress with the eye mutation?
For some odd reason, they had only been looking at DVR rating in three day blocks. Some smart person decided, hey, why not 5 day blocks so we can look at the weekend.
Lo and behold, a lot of people in this demographic watch the shows at odd times during the weekends.
This is why despite low Nielson rating Dollhouse was renewed.
I suspect a couple of things are being learned right now.
1) People like to watch on their own terms.
2) Ad skipping isn't as bad as they had thought.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
3. 3. HTML ordered lists already number themselves.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
3 and 4 disappointments? Leela's Homeworld, Jurassic Bark, The Why of Fry, Roswell that Ends Well, Godfellas, The Sting, The Farnsworth Paradox... plenty of episodes in those seasons that make them worthwhile...and I could probably come up with more if I had an episode list handy.
This will be a reboot of Futurama with a new cast, and more action (and sex) to excite a younger more modern audience. The Planet Express spaceship's bridge will look like the Apple Store, Leela will be having a secret affair with Bender. It will be shot in realistic shakey-cam. And there will be lots of lens flare...
Series four gave us The Farnsworth Parabox, The Sting, 300 Big Boys and The Devils Hands are Idle Playthings, all of which were awesome.
Also, more importantly, which writers dropped off the show in seasons three and four that you think were funny and sharp? Given the writers credits in Wikipedia suggest that almost all contributors in the first two seasons wrote episodes in three and four I'm not really sure who you're referring to:
List of Futurama episodes with writers
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I really like Futurama; I have all four DVD sets and the four movies. However, I think this series should rest in peace. It's over.
The series was great and got progressively better as time went on. However, if the movies are any indication the revived series will be crap. Each movie was worse than the last. They weren't particularly creative with the stories and overall the writing overwrought and not compelling. There was so much untapped potential in the series but instead the movies degraded into pathetic, poorly executed fan service. Some jokes were quite funny but otherwise I felt like they were trying too hard to recreate Family Guy and Adult Swim's brand of humor. And probably the most obnoxious part was the constant environmentalist proselytizing. Some episodes used Al Gore and that theme to great effect but Bender's Game, in particular, was about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the crotch.
However, I am a sucker for Futurama, so I'll definitely watch. But if it ends up being the same kind of crap I saw in the movies I wont be watching for long.
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.
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!
VOICES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!