It’s official: Comedy Central has picked up the rights to renew 20th Century Fox Television’s Futurama for 26 new episodes, six years after getting initially cancelled by the Fox network. In a recent EW interview with a 20th Century Fox spokesman, they say the DVD sales and reruns have had a “blockbuster” performance:
“When we brought back Family Guy several years ago, everyone said that it was a once in a lifetime thing — that canceled series stay canceled and cannot be revived,” 20th Century Fox TV Co-Chairman Gary Newman and Dana Walden said in a joint statement. “But Futurama was another series that fans simply demanded we bring back, and we couldn’t have been happier when Matt and David agreed that there were many more stories yet to tell.”
Both creators David X Cohen and Matt Groening were of course ecstatic about the news. Said Groening: “We’re thrilled Futurama is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000.”
Between this mistake and the mistake of canceling Family Guy, maybe this means Fox TV will think twice about axing an animated series, or even a live action series (Could we see the resurrection of Greg the Bunny?). You can currently catch reruns of Futurama on Comedy Central throughout the week and you can even pre-order the complete box set inside of a limited Bender head from Amazon today!
