Posts with tag MattGroening
Posted Mar 21st 2008 10:25AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: TV on DVD, Futurama
As the first
Futurama straight-to-DVD movie,
Bender's Big Score, begins airing on Comedy Central (they'll air the movie as a four-episode blok on Sunday night), Fox has announced the name and release date of the second straight-to-DVD epic.
AnimationMagazine.net reports that
Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs will be released on June 24, and they note that Fox calls it "the most tentacle-packed
Futurama epic." Since it's a continuation of
Bender's Big Score, I'll talk about the plot of the new movie after the jump, for the benefit of those who haven't seen the first movie yet.
Continue reading New Futurama movie coming to DVD in June
Posted Jul 28th 2007 7:53PM by Julia Ward
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Industry, Celebrities, Futurama
Futurama is back, and now we know in what form. The show will return on November 27th as a full-length high-def film sold on DVD. It will be followed by three additional films, and each film will be divided into four episodes each to be aired on Comedy Central. So, that's 4 DVD movies or 16 new episodes depending on how you look at it.
Continue reading Comic-Con: Futurama panel report
Posted Jul 21st 2007 1:29PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Industry, Programming, Web, Celebrities
Posted Apr 19th 2007 4:10PM by Isabelle Carreau
Filed under: The Simpsons
Has it been 20 years already? Time flies when you are watching a great TV gem such as
The Simpsons. I liked this series so much, especially when it started, that my first website was devoted to them!
Parade has a nice article about this milestone, including an interview with executive producer Al Jean.
Twenty years ago today (April 19, 1987), the world was introduced to the crazy and funny Simpsons thanks to a two-minute short featured on
The Tracey Ullman Show. These sketches, created by Matt Groening, quickly gained in popularity and eventually paved the way to a half-hour sitcom.
Continue reading The Simpsons turns 20 this week
Posted Feb 27th 2007 2:20PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, TV on the Bigscreen, The Simpsons, Animation
Matt Groening's getting around these days. Last month
he spoke with TV Squad's Joel Keller, and recently he met with the folks at
Crave recently to talk about
The Simpsons TV show and upcoming movie.
A few gems from the interview:
- The movie will not be about Bart losing his virginity. Someone once asked one of the writers what the movie would be about, and he joked that this was the plot. It's not. Some folks don't seem to know a joke when it sleeps with them.
- When asked straight out whether the movie will reveal what state Springfield is in, Groening replies "Yes. We actually have a really good joke about that. Remember, I said joke." I'm going to take that as a no.
- Thanks to all the pop culture references thrown into The Simpsons over the years, Groening's kids (and millions of others) have seen movies like Casablanca later in life and said to themselves "Oh, that's just like that Simpsons episode!"
[via
Cinematical]
Posted Jan 31st 2007 6:33PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, TV Royalty, The Simpsons, Animation, Adult Swim, Interviews, Comedy Central, Futurama, TCA Press Tour
Probably my favorite moment during the TCA press tour week -- and this is a week where I joked around with Greg the Bunny and visited the set of
Scrubs -- was when I met Matt Groening at FOX's party on the last night of the tour. Because just about all the questions I had about
The Simpsons were asked during the
show's press session earlier in the day, I took the opportunity to concentrate on his other show (and a perennial favorite amongst our readers),
Futurama, and
its impending return to TV.
Groening gives the show's loyal fans all the credit in the world for helping the show come back. "The continued devotion of the fans, chiefly on the Internet, kept us thinking that maybe we could bring this back," he said.
Continue reading Matt Groening talks about Futurama's comeback
Posted Jan 8th 2007 8:31AM by Annie Wu
Filed under: The Simpsons, Animation, Web, Anime, Futurama
Quite contrary to the stereotype associated with my nationality, I'm not a big fan of anime. That two year phase came and went while I was still in elementary school, thanks very much. Nowadays, I find the "anime look" a little boring, so when an artist actually does something fun and exciting with it, I sit up and take notice. I also love it when people re-interpret cartoons in different artistic styles (for example, the realistic sketches of Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny on
South Park a few months ago)
So, when I found
this artist's group shots of
The Simpsons' and
Futurama's ensembles, I was pretty amazed. Each character looks totally different, but it's still easy to tell who's who (a most important element in good fan-art). I think it's fantastic, but, I must admit, I'm a little disturbed by Lisa's striking resemblance to the characters of
Dragon Ball. It must be a hair thing.
[
via Neatorama]
Posted Dec 13th 2006 3:44PM by Kevin Kelly
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, TV on DVD, Animation, Comedy Central, Futurama
David X. Cohen spilled a few beans recently to
Toyfare Magazine about the upcoming new
Futurama season that'll be both direct to DVD, and
appearing on Comedy Central. Right now it's like the chicken and egg, and nobody knows which will come first, but I know that one way or another, I'll be watching. Here's a couple of tidbits:
- The entire original cast is returning
- You'll find out some of Nibbler's secrets
- Al Gore is back
What more can you ask for? Except of course, for them to hurry up and finish it. How long does someone have to wait for some new
Futurama goodness? Apparently at least a year longer. The new
Futurama won't be ready until 2008, meaning that five years will have passed since a new episode has been seen. Five years! Still, I suppose it's a small price to pay. How many shows come back from the dead after that long? Does this mean I shouldn't give up hope on
Gilligan's Island?
[Thanks, Justin and Jeff]
Posted Jun 18th 2006 8:19PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, TV on DVD, OpEd, Animation, Retro Squad, Futurama
(S01E03) So, now we've seen how Fry gets to the year 3000, and we've met the Planet Express crew. Now's the time to tell some stories.
There were a bunch of interesting tidbits from the DVD commentary to this episode. One was the admission from Matt Groening that the storytelling in
Futurama was more linear than it was on his other show,
The Simpsons, mostly due to the fact that there's so much going on in the background of a typical
Futurama epsiode. Well, with all due respect to Groening's genius, duh. I've always equated the storytelling on
Futurama to what the early years of
The Simpsons were like before the pop-culture asides and other wackiness started to dominate. This episode, where Fry and Bender become rommates, is a perfect example of the show's storytelling prowess; an episode like this would have been told completely differently on
The Simpsons, or at least on the show from it's third season onward.
Continue reading Futurama: I, Roommate
Posted Jun 15th 2006 11:15AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: FOX, Talent, Industry, Animation, Adult Swim, Interviews, Celebrities, The Daily Best, Retro Squad, Futurama
If you've watched any cartoon on TV in the last fifteen years, chances are you've heard
Billy West's voice. West is one of the premier voice actors working today, and during those fifteen years, he's used his versatile voice to create new characters -- and resuurect old ones -- all over the television and movie landscape. From Shaggy to Bugs Bunny to Woody Woodpecker to the Cherios Honey Bee to the Red M&M, the 54-year old West has put his imprint on all of them. But most people know him from two classic cartoon series: On
Ren & Stmpy, he did the voices of both main characters (he picked up Ren after creator John Kricfalusi was fired after the first season), and on
Futurama he did the voices of Philip Fry, Professor Farnsworth, Dr. John Zoidberg, and Zapp Brannigan, among others.
In this wide-ranging interview, conducted by phone on May 31, Billy and I talked about his history with John K., the way he went about creating some of his
Futurama characters, his early-'90s role on "The Howard Stern Show", and the influx of celebrity voices in current cartoon movies (let's just say he's against it). We also went over all the
Futurama Season One episodes in the 90-minute (!) interview, which you will see in my
Retro Squad coverage of the show. He was even nice enough to do a
Futurama / R&S -themed intro for our APB podcast, which we used
to open podcast #13 last week. Needless to say, Billy West is a mensch.
Continue reading Billy West: The TV Squad Interview
Posted Jan 5th 2006 10:33AM by Anna Johns
Filed under: FOX, Animation
Last
month,
Joel reported on an article
in Australia's Sydney Morning Herald which suggested that
Futurama may be making a return to television. This
morning, America's own
Variety magazine is reporting similar news. Although FOX refuses to confirm the report,
Variety says that strong DVD sales and high ratings for
Futurama reruns have led FOX executives to
reconsider their 2003 cancellation of the animated program.
Variety says that creator Matt Groening and writer
David X. Cohen are in negotiations with FOX to revive
Futurama for television. In that article last month,
Groening and Cohen both said that they hoped to be in a similar situation to
Family Guy, which was cancelled
by FOX but then brought back to life when DVD sales reached the fourth-highest ever for a television show.
Futurama had five seasons and three emmys.
What do you think? Would you like
Futurama to
return to weekly television? And then there's always that rumor about a
Futurama movie...
Posted Jan 3rd 2006 11:18AM by Keith McDuffee
Filed under: TV on the Bigscreen, Animation, Adult Swim
Everybody knows you can't take "upcoming" entries on IMDb seriously, but the readers over on
Digg are either extremely hopeful or are in utter denial. A recent(?)
entry on IMDb shows a
Futurama show coming to be, sometime in
2007, though most likely straight-to-video. So, if this is the real deal, what would you rather see of the movie: a
kick-off for
the renewed series,
or a nice wrap-up of the series?
Cinematical wrote on the
"confirmation" of this movie long
ago.
[via
Digg]
Posted Dec 20th 2005 3:55PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: FOX, Talent, Programming, OpEd, Animation
I've always noticed that other countries seem to
appreciate Matt Groening's humor more than we do here. Sure,
The Simpsons is a long-running hit here, and has
a huge fan base, but it seems like it's damn near
revered in England, for instance, to the point where you
hear more Brits quoting Homer Simpson than quote Monty Python. So it's no surprise to see that Australia's
The
Syndey Morning Herald has the scoop about a
possible return of Groening's other great series,
Futurama. According to Groening and writer David X.
Cohen, DVD sales of old episodes and the return of
Family Guy under similar circumstances has bouyed their
hopes that the show will return soon.
"Three months ago, I would have said we were going to start
tomorrow," says Cohen in the article. "And one month ago I would also have said we were going to start
tomorrow. So... my current estimate is that we're starting tomorrow."
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