I love Futurama, but I do think the show should have stayed finished, if only because that episode with Fry and Leela agreeing to relive it all again at the end was honestly really, really good. Still, fingers are crossed that the new episodes turn out good.
And if I had a nickel for every time a comedy-scifi show that was on Comedy Central at some point, ended its run, and was brought back and found a new home on a streaming service with a robot’s voice getting changed…I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t much, but it’s weird it happened twice.
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John’s wife tweeted an article and said it was the best summary of the situation she’d seen.
My understanding, then, is this:
Hulu reached out to the main cast with the same offer to all of them. Most of them took it. John decided he was worth more. Hulu didn’t have more to offer. (Hulu has a smaller subscriber base than Netflix or Disney+, so they’ve got less money to throw around. You can see how much they had to scale back Animaniacs in the revival.) So John set about furiously retweeting everyone who talked about how awesome he is and how much they love his work and how they wouldn’t watch the show unless it included him. He’s using that to strengthen his bargaining position.
Hulu, in the meantime, is auditioning replacements. If they can find a good one, they’ll be able to either use that as a bargaining chip to counter John’s argument or as a contingency to allow them to move forward.
Apparently negotiations are ongoing, but I don’t get the sense that either side is budging. Maybe when the deadline to get everyone into the booth approaches, one of them will blink. Or they’ll find some acceptable middle ground.
But I agree that the show already had a good run and a good ending and there are plenty of other new things to watch. As I said before, I’m also worried that the Animaniacs revival was so disappointing. It’s so scaled back, so formulaic. It lacks the soul of the original and its willingness to do the unexpected. Really hoping they don’t do that to Futurama.
That said, I did very briefly have the opportunity to sit in the recording room with Billy West, Phil LaMarr, and Maurice Lamarche (along with some other top tier pros), and not only were they incredibly talented but they were really nice and cool people, and so happy to work together. So I’m rooting for them.
We’ll see how it goes.
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I was immediately leery when I heard the announcement, because I love the show so much and I’m frankly sick of various franchises these days getting dragged out and then resurrected and then dragged out again like a zombie horse. Even though I love the entire series and thought it ended well, I do think that the last couple seasons weren’t as good quality as the rest of the show. Does every iteration of a show follow the rules of radioactive decay? Or will this new set of episodes be really great and refreshed? If it’s the former, I don’t even wanna see them, cuz I don’t want to spoil the rest of my feelings about the show.
My other reservation is, I want the show to stay true to its original format. I don’t wanna see a new, edgier, less censored show just because they’re on Hulu now and don’t have to worry about “the network.” I appreciate the series because it’s got innuendo but it’s also clever and the humor is far beyond simple dirty jokes. I hope they find good writers who can tell the same quality of stories and humor as the original.
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“Chomp my glossy steel butt!”
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Well, John DiMaggio replaced John Goodman as Robot Santa, maybe Goodman can replace DiMaggio as Bender.
Both, actually. First the crew bargained for making four movies, figuring they’d get three, but they got all four (“Bender’s Big Score”, “Beast With A Billion Backs”, “Bender’s Game” and “Into the Wild Green Yonder”) which together comprise season 6. Then the show was brought back for five more seasons, though I think it might have been cancelled again somewhere in there.
For my money, “The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings” is one of the best episodes of anything ever and the series should’ve ended there. But y’all have money, too, so I’m outvoted. 
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Huh. I think the new Animaniacs were decent. Basically how much I enjoyed any given segment was directly linked to how little time they spent trying to be political. The art has lost something, it’s true. There a strange tightness or cramped feeling to it that I can’t quite explain. But the voices are still very good.
Oh, and even though it’s a shame that many of the old characters didn’t come back, their explanation for it in-story was a hoot.
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There were some good skits, definitely. And I love that they got the original voices back. All the same… The original show just did so much. You never knew what would come on next. The new version just feels stripped down. Formulaic. Soulless. On its own, it wouldn’t be a bad show? But it’s very clearly a low-budget version of the show I grew up with. And that’s the problem. I don’t think Hulu has the budget to do these shows the way they should be done. But, with the full Futurama cast on board, we’ll see if they can do better on this one.
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