Seven years ago, Fox gave the pink slip to “Futurama.” Now endless repeats on cable, solid DVD set sales and four direct-to-DVD movies later, the series is making a comeback. The first half of 26-episode sixth season will debut in June on Comedy Central.
How will the move to cable affect the show? Producer David X. Cohen says that the show will still be the same “Futurama” we’ve come to know and love.
“I think there are a couple of episodes where we do push that edge a little bit, thanks to our being on Comedy Central — nothing that couldn’t have run the first time, but perhaps the quantity of borderline material is a little higher,” Cohen tells EW.
“For example, we have an episode that was Matt Groening’s brainchild, with Zap Brannigan and Leela getting stranded on a Garden of Eden planet,” he adds. “Matt wanted to do a story based on this science-fiction trope where man and woman land on a planet and at the end of the episode you realize that they’re Adam and Eve and they’re going to recreate society. But he wanted to do that at the starting point of the episode, so we have Zap and Leela stranded on this beautiful Garden of Eden planet and they’re naked and wearing fig leaves immediately. It’s a little more cartoon flesh than we would have shown in the old days.”
Cohen adds that the series will pick up and resolve the ending of “Into the Wild Green Yonder” that saw Fry and Leela getting together. However, fans need not worry that the show will be about the two having kids and moving to the suburbs.
And what kind of stories can we expect? Cohen offers a few hints.
“One thing that was beneficial to being off the air for a while was that society generated a few story lines for us. We’re going to see our versions of Twitter and iPhones in the future, as Fry posts embarrassing videos of Leela online. The difference is, in our version of the iPhone, the iPhone is implanted in your eye. It’s a tiny hovering screen in front of you and it’s even more annoying than the real iPhone,” Cohen says.
“One of my favorite episodes of the year is one where Bender tries to pass a ballot initiative called Proposition Infinity to legalize robosexual marriage, which is the marriage between a robot and a human. It’s taboo and illegal in the future, and there’s going to be a very shocking romance between Bender and one of our female characters,” he teases.
“[In another episode], the Professor invents a time machine that only goes forward in time. Once they start going, there is no hope of return. And the initial goal is to just go a minute forward into the future and test it out, but the Professor trips and they’re immediately 1,000 years in the future with nowhere to go but forward. So they spend the episode going further and further through all future history trying to find the technology for a backward time machine,” Cohen adds.
Cohen says that the guest-stars this year will include Katie Sackoff, Craig Ferguson and return appearances by Al Gore and George Takei.
The new season kicks off June 24 on Comedy Central.
The 2 things I got out of this article: 1. Futurama’s coming back. 2: They misspelled George Takei’s name. I’ll remember the 2nd point much more.
I think FOX made a big mistake and they need to have some BSG.Like Bender found Starbuck and he’s the cylon future