Slashdot Mirror
Original Futurama Cast Seals Deal With Fox
Svippy writes "As we discussed earlier, 20th Century Fox Television was attempting to recast Futurama. As it turns out, this was just part of a big negotiation ploy, and the original cast have now completed their deals to return with the show's new episodes. For those of you who did not follow the story, a chronology of the events and reactions from the cast members are available at Infosphere and Voice Actors in the News. Series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen said, 'We are thrilled to have our incredible cast back. The call has already gone out to the animators to put the mouths back on the characters.'"
GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!
"The call has already gone out to the animators to put the mouths back on the characters." An Eiffel Tower reference from WWII? The operators purportedly had the elevators working again 10 minutes after Paris was liberated. Very nice.
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
Although I knew the only real possibilities were the original cast returning or the show not being made.
Even though we have the proverbial "500 channels", there's still as much a lack of good creative shows as ever, and Futurama fits that bill perfectly. Newt Minow's "vast wasteland" is alive and strong!
Especially since the #1 show "American Politics" got a whole new set of writers but has still managed to get even dumber than ever... ludicrous plots, inane dialog, stories so far-fetched no one would ever believe them in real life...
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Fry- Can I come back at severely reduced pay?
Hermes- Of course! In fact, severely reduced pay all around!
Let's hope life didn't imitate art. These people are worth it. Heck, I'll even watch the commercials ... in my dreams.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Almost makes me want to head to the store right now and pick up some Torgo's Executive Powder.
I always thought Seth McFarlane would be great as Nibbler.
I don't know about you, but I didn't see this one coming. I mean, Billy West, Katey Sagal, John Di Maggio, Dan Castellaneta, Phil Lamar, and everyone else on the cast are all expendable and anyone can do the voices they do.
Okay, Leela _could_ be replaced, but would anyone buy Leela as Leela with any voice other than that of Peggy Bundy? Amy Wong can be replaced, but why would you want to? It would only serve as a distraction and land you in a JTS category. (for the record as an aside: if Fry and Leela do it, I don't think it'd be a JTS moment. I hope Fry+Leela eventually happens because that can open up whole new story lines to explore)
I know, other hit animations have changed voice actors (Meg Griffin) without too much impact, but the magic of Futurama is like the beatles - the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It's not just the great writing, it's not just the unique blend of 3D rendering and conventional 2D cel animation, and it's not just the individual character voices. It's the great chemistry throughout the entire team. It's a damn shame Futurama was ever cancelled in the first place (allegedly due to corporate politics) and I don't understand why it was harder to resurrect than Family Guy was. I mean, I know more people who like Futurama than Family Guy (I happen to enjoy both shows, but I wouldn't adjust my schedule around Family Guy like I did for Futurama).
Family Guy offends a lot of people. I don't know anyone who is offended by Futurama. Non-geeks/non-engineers I know who watch Futurama watch it for the low-brow humor (it includes some LCD humor for the low-IQ segment of the population) and while they don't get the math and science jokes they love it nonetheless. Almost every well-educated person I know who has seen Futurama loves it: engineers, doctors, chemists, programmers, help desk workers, architects. The only person I know who hates it also hates The Simpsons, and it's for this reason: he is a graphic design artist, and detests the simplicity of the 2D animation. Unlike most fans, he doesn't see Groening's style as having its own unique charm, but sees it as a hack and as lack of talent/laziness. I happen to see genius in Groening's style; in that he lets the writing and quality of the team as a whole convey the story rather than producing poorly-written, poorly-acted eye candy. If you want eye candy, go see a Disney flick. You'll get dreadfully boring eye candy.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
This show was never all that gre-ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!
Blackmail is such an ugly word. I prefer "extortion." The "X" makes it sound cool.
So ah, if he wants his last name to be pronounced like "Greyning" then why does he spell it so that it looks like it should be pronounced "Growning?" Seriously, by what rule of English grammar does "Groe" sound exactly like "Grey"??.
From the same english rule that allows for words like Phoenix (unless you pronounce this Fow-nix). Words where oe is pronounced as "ee" are from the "ioticized omicron" spelling in Greek, ÎÎ, which was originally pronounced like "oy", but is often simplified into just an "ee" sound or similar.
"Owning a computer is like having your very own TV -- with a built in radio!" - Ed Helms
No offense to the voice actors... They're great, of course...
But I'd rather have the original writers back. Any word on them?
And you thought Family Guy bashes Fox in their episodes?
So ah, if he wants his last name to be pronounced like "Greyning" then why does he spell it so that it looks like it should be pronounced "Growning?"
Why does he spell his last name correctly as it appears on his birth certificate? I don't know why anyone would ever consider doing that.
A mention of Checkov actor, Walter Koenig, is appropriate here.
[
Yes.
Ken Keeler, Eric Kaplan, David X. Cohen (obviously), Patric M. Verrone, among others are confirmed back. I probably forgot some.
Just to give you an idea on what these writers did, I am going to highlight one episode for each, respectively; "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", "Jurassic Bark", "The Why of Fry" and "The Sting".
They already did reveal some of the content for the coming production season at the Comic-Con panel. In case you want to see if they are still on the edge.
Clicked pie.
What does English grammar have to do with a German name?
I would say because the A in ASCII thought that nobody should ever need the o umlaut (even this bloody site gets confused over Ã), Germans on the other hand who like to comply to any given ridiculous standard (insert Godwin here) responded by thinking oe is close enough.
If consumed, best digested with added seasoning to own preference.
Did California use stimulus $$ on "Full Utilization of Continuing Kharacters?" (Sorry, bad spellr)
Seconded. I believe the original spelling of this name has been 'Gröning', though even modern Germans sometimes use 'oe' for the o-umlaut. Similarly, 'Koenig' is originally 'König'.
Of course, many families seem to adapt the pronunciation and/or spelling of their names to the local language.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
what a jerk
Go home and shave your giant head of smell with your bad self
...Never got around to watching much Futurama, but glad to hear that they're presumably not trying a recycle-just-the-name thing.
For some reason, the idea of post-crash Lynyrd Skynyrd comes to mind here. (Maybe someone who's further into that type of music could enlighten me on that particular example?)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
So much ignorance in your post as to make my head linguist head spin, but this is the sentence I'm picking:
Seriously, by what rule of English grammar does "Groe" sound exactly like "Grey"??
Um, none, for a few reasons:
1) This is what "grammar" means. Clausal structure, etc.
2) The word you're actually looking for is orthography .
3) Finally, and this is a big one, English orthography wouldn't apply to a German name. One of the reasons spelling is so difficult in English is that it is a loanword slut. It hangs around at the linguistic docks, taking any wayfaring word spelled in roman characters home. It is the reason we have one of the largest vocabularies on the planet, but also the reason why spelling is difficult. I'll take it, though. It beats the socks off of the Academie francaise, which exists to keep foreign words out of French in favor of made-up French equivalents that no one uses. It also beats the Japanese system of ghettoization by the use of a different character set for foreign words. And it is simpler than the daunting task ahead of Chinese speakers, who have to find characters which have a similar sound, and whose meaning at least has something to do with the word in question. Overall, English's flexibility and open nature is a key to its strength.
So there's that.
A mention of Checkov actor, Walter Koenig, is appropriate here.
And also of House Minority Leader John Boehner. Or Wayne Newton's song Danke Shoen.
It seems to be American English standard for German names that have an o-umlaut or oe (which is the same thing; the umlaut started out as a small e laying on it's side on top of another vowel) to pronounce it like "ay", instead of like the German sound English lacks or even "ur", which is more like how I think most English speakers hear o-umlaut.
p.s. Curse /. and their lack of support for non-ascii characters.
That's a very odd explanation, considering "Groening" is a German surname. Here, it is technically "gr" + o-with-umlaut + "ning," where the o-with-umlaut is pronounced like an "eh" sound in your mouth while your lips are shaped like you're making an "oh" sound. However, to make things easier for the Alemanophobes in the audience, we alter it to English phonetics (the o-with-umlaut does not exist in English).
My surname has the exact same sound in it.
Technically, "oe" came before "o-with-umlaut." It was "oe," then it became "o-with-e-on-top." Because of the way an "e" looked at this point in German orthography, it became "o-with-two-parallel-vertical-lines-on-top," which became "o-with-umlaut." This is the same way we got a- and u-with-umlaut. You can see this in old script for "schoen" at Wikipedia: (schoen, scho-with-e-aboven, scho-with-umlautn).
That is incorrect. The "r" comes before, not after the vowel you're trying to approximate. You could say it would be "better" to transliterate it into English as "Gerning." However, Germans prefer instead to keep the spelling that they traditionally used, I'd imagine. Take note that the umlauted a/o/u are all predated by ae/oe/ue.
How do you record those commercials that appear in your dreams?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"ee" isn't similar to "ay", and Groening appears to be a German surname, not a Greek one.
IMO, unless they get Dave Herman back, it's not the whole cast. That guy is awesome. His regular voices like Roberto, Mayor Poopenmeyer and Dr. Wernstrom are all hilarious, but also he's got range: he can produce amazingly different voices for all those one-time characters he does, whom you don't really remember, like Leela's martial arts sensei Fnog.
Also it's silly to focus just on the voice acting cast. I don't know their names, but I know it takes a huge crew of talented artists and writers to make the magic happen, and I hope all those talented people come back. It would be bad to cut back on the visual and writing talent to pay for the voice talent. The last thing any of us want is 26 half-baked, mediocre episodes. Better the show should end at five good seasons.
$META_SIG_JOKE
The correct name of the studio is "30th Century Fox."
This Futarama crap is crap. The Simpsons is what should come back. Phil Hartman especially. He must be holding out for 10 million at least. Also, I like The Who to continue to make guest appearences from time to time.
I'd love it if the Simpsons from the 80s and early 90s returned.
Unfortunately all we get are the Simpsons from the late 90s and 2000s.
Because of the way an "e" looked at this point in German orthography
Interesting stuff, thanks for the explanation and the link.
I'm curious, however. On the Wikipedia page you link to, the "way an 'e' looked at this point in German orthography" seems to be "exactly like an 'n' looks". Am I missing some subtle difference? If not, how did they tell the difference between the two? :)
I think the GP AC is trying to say that the pronunciation of 'ö' in Germanic languages is approximately like 'er' in English. So a possible transliteration could be 'Grerning', but nobody seems to use that logic in practice.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I believe there have been jokes about lowercase e, u, and n in German looking the same. Here is a depiction of the lowercase alphabet of one old German font.
But the The Why of Fry was the only good one on that list. I refuse to watch Jurassic Bark since I didn't think it was funny that Fry incinerates his loyal dog. The other two are part of Futurama's slide in space opera drama between Fry and Leela.
I found the best way to get an English speaker to make the sound is to stand on a snail. The "ugh" sound they make is a pretty good approximation.
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers