“Futurama” Has A Bright Future

By Jeff Pfeiffer

Matt Groening and David X. Cohen’s brilliant animated comedy Futurama is having a Family Guy-type resurrection as it will be returning to production on 26 new half-hour episodes more than six years after its last original episode aired on FOX. The episodes will be running on Comedy Central beginning in mid-2010, with a broadcast run also possible. Comedy Central has been airing reruns of the series since 2006, along with the Futurama movies made since its cancellation. It has been the movies’ blockbuster performance on DVD and Comedy Central that helped revive interest in bringing back the series.

“We’re thrilled Futurama is coming back,” says Groening. “We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000.”

Cohen adds, “We’re excited and amazed that the show is coming back, perhaps due to some sort of mysterious time loop.”

“When we brought back Family Guy several years ago,” comments 20th Century Fox TV chairmen Gary Newman and Dana Walden, “everyone said that it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, that canceled series stay canceled and cannot be revived. But Futurama was another series that fans simply demanded we bring back.”