TVSquad

Our friends at ComicsAlliance attended the Comic-Con panel for Futurama. Laura Hudson reports a curious absence there:

The original panel for Futurama was billed as event where we would "join executive producers Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, and stars Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, and Maurice LaMarche for high-stakes thrills as a top-ranking FOX executive decides live, on stage, whether Futurama will make yet another triumphant return or whether it is gone forever!"

It was an obvious setup for a Fox exec to reunite the cast and creator and cue wild applause from fans for the revival of the cult favorite cartoon. Unfortunately, as a result of the recent contract disputes and salary cuts for the voice cast -- and the subsequent threats from Fox that they would recast the characters -- none of the voice actors were in attendance, although series creator Matt Groening voiced his support for them, saying that "we love our Futurama actors. We hope that FOX and the actors can come to an agreement as soon as possible."

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.

On November 27, Futurama comes back in a big way with Bender's Big Score, an "epic" film involving all the characters from the show that ran on Fox from 1999-2003. The DVD is the first in a series of four direct-to-DVD releases, which will be edited into 16 episodes that will air on Comedy Central in 2008. Fellow Squadder Brad Trechak gave the disc a positive review last week, which is high praise coming from a big fan of the show as he is.

David X. Cohen, executive producer and show-runner of Futurama, spoke to me via phone last week. We didn't have much time, only about ten minutes or so, so we got down to the nuts and bolts: how the movies will play on Comedy Central, some information on the show's comeback, a quick preview of the next DVD, and how the Fox executives felt about being ground into all-purpose powder.

(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.

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.

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...

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."