No New Series of Futurama

Nikoth writes "It seems that Billy West got it wrong when he announced that there are 26 new episodes of Futurama on the way, and instead there will only be the 4 movies as planned. "

Or is there...

[Bizzeh]

maybe.... billy west was told about this, and told its a secret, forgot that it was a secret, told the fans of futurama, when it got out that people know, billy was told to tell them its not true... to keep the secret...

Re:Stop screwing with shows

[G)-(ostly]

It almost seems like nerdy clique shows don't generally rake in a large enough share of the ad revenue for their time slots and get cancelled because more people will sit down and watch a fat woman screaming about GAHGOYLES than a "witty" starship captain and his zany adventures.

It almost seems like tv execs are trying to make money rather than pander to you personally.

What an unfair world we live in.

Re:Fill Me In

[bedroll]

I'll fill you in: This was a PR stunt. It was meant to generate buzz about the possible return of Futurama so that there would be a higher likelihood that it would be picked up.

I think the buzz was there, but they just didn't pick it up. At least fans get the movies, though.

Anyway, I was pretty clear about it when I read the previous report about Futurama that it was speculation and hearsay. Fortunately, some of us know how to take a source into context and realize that this is a quasi-news site, not a courtroom. Speculation and hearsay, presented as such, is and should be welcome... so long as it's newsworthy to someone.

Re:Is That All?

[moro_666]

Imho more than 1 movie on any theme is a disaster, stretching reapeating boring stuff. Just look at chuck or seagal, these dudes play the same record for years (or decades, depends on the actor).

  The series were nice tho, i think it's one of the funniest tv cartoons that we have had in the last 10 years.

  Must kill all humans

FanFlicks?

[ah.clem]

I don't recall seeing any fan created versions of Futurama, Family Guy, etc. after they left the air - it seems to me that it would be easier to create an animation homage than do live action movies (like Star Trek). Have there been any home-grown versions of animated series?

ah.clem

Re:Stop screwing with shows

[Alamais]

Hence, you can run Battlestar Galactica at 10:00pm on a Friday and get record numbers of us to tune in - they know we're not doing anything else on Friday night from 10-11 pm.

Hmm...you know, I've seen this argument before, and now that I think of it, I'm not so sure about its accuracy. I mean, take someone outside of the usual "Sci Fi watcher" sterotype, i.e. someone who goes out into the world on Fridays. The bars & clubs don't really get hopping until 11/midnight anyway. Why not watch some Sci Fi with your pregame? ^_^

*cough* BSG + Moonshine = WIN!

Six weeks ago

[caliban-23]

Matt Groening told me personally that the series was going back into production for television.

Re:Stop screwing with shows

[realityfighter]

I actually think that Fox may be onto something with their "cancelling great shows" habit. I know you and I think of television as an ongoing thing; success in the American market usually means a long pre-syndication primetime run. But other areas of the world are perfectly willing to run single-season shows. The perfect example of this is Anime - many popular shows, such as FLCL, Evangelion, Trigun, and Cowboy Bebop were written with a single story arc, 26 episodes or less, intended to be taken together as a single work. This seems to be what Fox is stabbing at, especially with shows like Arrested Development and Family Guy which had definitive "endings."

Why would Fox do this? There are plenty of advantages to creating (essentially) long form movies like these. For one, they can sell single-unit hard copies of the show long after it has gone off the air; and if they could sell television shows like DVD movies, that would be a great source of revenue. But the real sauce is in merchandising. Family Guy became a merchandising cash cow after it was cancelled, and the DVDs of the series became an entertainment staple. Futurama has seen similar retail success, and anyone else notice the amazing upsurge in Firefly merch as Serenity approached?

Making one season of a good show is also a lot cheaper and a lot faster. Firefly has basically leapt from "new show" to "movie franchise" in the time it took to make the entire Star Trek original series, and its success was far cheaper. And dare I point out that the format doesn't burn out the writers, and keeps them happy coming up with new ideas for yet more shows?

Of course, I don't know Fox's financials, but I'm willing to bet that they've made more from merchandising and syndicating Family Guy, Futurama, Firefly, or Arrested Development than they get from selling advertising on most of their other shows. (And I bet reruns of those have a better ad index than most of their "fresh" shows, too - the shows were cancelled before they could make any bad episodes!)