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Animated comedy saved again
Futurama is to come back from the dead – again.Another 26 episodes of Matt Groening’s animated comedy are being planned, to air on America’s Comedy Central from the middle of next year.
The series originally aired on the Fox network from 1999 to 2003 – but after it was cancelled, fan demand led to four new feature-length episodes being made for DVD.
‘It was a little bit of putting our toe in the water to see what sort of response we could get,’ said Gary Newman, chairman of 20th Century Fox, the studio which produces the progamme.
‘We discovered that, like Family Guy, there\'s a passionate core audience and a tremendous pent-up demand to see more Futurama.\'
But the new episodes will have a tighter budget than the previous networked series, Newman admitted to Hollywood paper Variety, meaning a smaller writing team and a quicker turnaround.
Groening said work had already begun on writing the new series. ‘We have ideas that we knocked around before we even began the first series,’ he said. ‘And we haven\'t gotten to everything yet.’
The original 72 episodes, and four DVD episodes, have been in reruns on Comedy Central since last year. Bringing the total number of episodes up to 98 will make it even easier to syndicate to cable stations.
Published: 10 Jun 2009
