A Future For Futurama?
Matt Groening, co-creator of Fox's animated SF spoof Futurama, told SCI FI Wire that he has big plans for the show, even if Fox doesn't resume production on the series once it airs the remaining 16 or so episodes that have already been completed. "Futurama's not over," Groening said in an interview at Fox's fall preview party in Los Angeles. "We're going full-steam ahead with keeping the universe alive in whatever form we can. And there are stories and movies and cartoons and comic books and toys yet to come. And video games."
Groening's Futurama partner, David X. Cohen, added that the game is due in January. "We have a Futurama video game for all the major home platforms: Xbox, PlayStation, GameCube," he said. "And I think there was much more input from the creative team, partially because we're not having to spend our time on the show, for some reason. So [J.] Stewart Burns, one of the original writers on the show, has written the script for the game. And there's actually so much material in there that basically you get a whole episode of Futurama sort of in the interstitial segments of the game."
Fox ordered the end of production at the end of last season and will air the remaining episodes starting in the fall. Among the episodes still to come are one in which Lt. Kif Kroker (Maurice LeMarche) becomes pregnant, another in which Bender the robot (John Di Maggio) undergoes a sex change, and another guest-starring Simpsons regular Dan Castellaneta as the voice of the Robot Devil, who makes a deal with Fry (Billy West) to impress Leela (Katey Sagal).
Groening said he's eager to continue working with the creators of the show, whether or not Futurama has a future. "I love this group of people that I worked with on Futurama, and we're going to work on another project," he said. "If it's not Futurama, I'm going to try to keep as many of the same people as I can to work on another animated project. I've got ... a couple of [SF&F] movies in the works, and I've got a couple of TV shows as well that I want to do. And we'll see. As many people as I can work with, I will go for."
