FUTURAMA
RETURN TO BENDER
RISES FROM THE GRAVE AGAIN TO LAND THE PLANET EXPRESS CREW AT HULU
WORDS: TARA BENNETT
WHEN IT COMES TO AMERICAN television, if a new series makes it on air and manages to last a season, that’s almost a miracle. If that series becomes a hit and lives on for multiple seasons, the creators have truly beaten the odds. And then sometimes you get a unicorn like Futurama.
The animated series created by Matt Groening (The Simpsons) and David X Cohen premiered in 1999 on the Fox Network, where it aired for four seasons before it was cancelled. Based on the strengths of its reruns, Futurama was revived by Comedy Central in 2008, where it lived for three more seasons. Ten years later, in an unprecedented turn of events for any TV series, Futurama is again back from the dead with two new seasons made for the streaming network Hulu.
Everyone from the creative team is back, including Groening, Cohen and the entire original voice cast including Billy West, Katey Sagal and John DiMaggio. It’s not lost on anyone that Futurama’s resurrections parallel the series’ premise, which had Philip J Fry (West), a pizza delivery boy from 1999, fall into a cryogenic pod and wake up in 2999. The only difference is the series keeps repeating its trips into the cancellation pod and waking up years later to start again.
“This is really pure joy for us,” Claudia Katz, an original producer and the executive vice president of Rough Draft Studios, tells SFX with a touch of awe. “We were always hopeful that someday we would return.”
Katz helped establish Futurama’s signature mix of 2D and 3D animation in 1999, and then never left the show. With every renewal, she’s helped update the show’s look and production process, working in tandem with Groening and Cohen. As a fan herself, she watched it grow from a sleeper gem to one of the most critically lauded animated shows ever, with an especially dedicated fanbase in the science fields.