Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Comedy Central orders new Futurama

Bender's Back, baby! Comedy Central ordered 13 new episodes of Futurama.

An insider told Collider.com that the network has given the series an order for 13 additional episodes to air now that the network has run through all of the series' original episodes and the four full-length DVD movies. This news has sparked rumors that production has officially started again on the series and casting is underway.

Can anyone think of any other series for which Comedy Central has done this? I can only think of MST3K.

Edit: OR Fox Ordered 26 new episodes.

Edit: OR Comedy Central ordered 26 episodes

7 comments:

MA17 said...

Incidentally, Sci-Fi saved MST3K for a few years after Comedy Central dumped them. I think CC got MST3K when some kind of merger happened with The Comedy Channel?

CC ran some episodes of The Tick from Fox Kids for a little while, that's kind of the same thing as what happened with Futurama but not really, I guess. Of course, Adult Swim revived the fuck out of Family Guy.

G4 never was able to bring back Fastlane. Or Arrested Development. G4 does very little, actually.

Mike Lewis said...

i cant think of anything - other than Cartoon Network "saving" family guy

i would guess that good sales of of the DVD and the made for TV movies helped too.

Roscoe said...

I dunno if Comedy Central got MST3K through the merger, or if they picked them up at roughly the same time..

Hrmn.. I want to say CC did this with some canadian Sketch Comedy shows..

_J_ said...

I'm mostly wondering about series that first existed on other channels which when then had new episodes purchased by Comedy Central.

Comedy Central has shown other shows which are in syndication or purchased episodes of other series. But ordering new episodes? I think Futurama may be the first unless MST3K was as I remember it and Comedy Central actually bought new episodes.

_J_ said...

Per the edit to the OP, it might be the case that FOX ordered the new episodes, which removes all of the "zomg comedy central" questions.

Part of my problem with Futurama is that I saw all of the episodes so many times in syndication that the quality of the show, in my mind, decreased. I wonder what new episodes will do.

As MA17 remarked, the movies were mostly vehicles to make inside jokes and reintroduce characters we never forgot. So it will be interesting to see how new episodes compare to the movies and to the old episodes. I think we all agree that the Seymore episode was the greatest fucking ending to an episode of a cartoon, ever. But other than that the series was pretty much slightly maybe worse than Simpsons in terms of quality. New episodes might change that view.

Roscoe said...

well.. CC picked up MST3K.. but.. to my memory.. they had ... One? season before that.. and it was on a local channel, not a network?

MA17 said...

KTMA in Minnesota ran MST3K when it was shot in the TV studio against a wall. I think the Best Brains guys shopped the show to the Comedy Channel, and I really think that network picked it up for a season before Comedy Central got it and Weinstein left.

Wiki says Weinstein left after KTMA, and MST3K ran for 2 seasons on the Comedy Channel before it merged with HA! and Comedy Central kept it on.