Originally posted by Damitol:
So - does anyone here really know what, if anything, would keep him from shopping Futurama around to other broadcast or cable networks once the show is officially cancelled? Of course Fox can play the "hiatus" card as long as it needs to to prevent him from shopping the show now.
Well, Fox could have some contract stipulating that he can't shop the show around until they've aired all the episodes they have in the can. Of course by the time Fox gets around to doing this, re-assembling a writing/animation staff that can reasonably reproduce the original style of Futurama (can't make it
too different or the fans won't watch) would take a lot of money. It'd be easier for a network to just hire Matt to do a completely new show for them.
That said, for some reason Matt has said he's not interested in shopping Futurama around to other networks, calling it "not my style." (See the recent
FT interview.)
Originally posted by Damitol:
Also - does anyone know the "drop dead" date on ordering episodes for a 2003-2004 season? It will be over a year before Fox officially unveils its lineup for that season, but due to the length of time animation takes, at what point is a 2003-2004 season impossible even if Fox (or Comedy Central or Sci-Fi Network) orders new episodes?
I'm not sure exactly, but given how late Futurama's season tends to start and how few episodes seem to make up a season (thanks to Fox execs), I'd say they could order them pretty late. Is Sarge still floating about? Maybe he could answer how long it normally takes from ordering a season's worth of episodes to shipping them to Fox.
Originally posted by Damitol:
I'm sad to say that I am a relativly recent fan, but I really want to see the show hit at least 100 episodes to make syndication more likely. As much as I've laughed just *reading* some of the classic episodes (heck - I even enjoyed That's Lobstertainment!), I can't wait to actually see them, and US DVDs are a long way off.
At this point I've all but given up hope on Futurama being renewed. (I try to be an optimist, but it's tough when you're dealing with Fox execs.) I'm just hoping that either A) Comedy Central (or another station) picks up Futurama for syndication, or B) no station does thereby prompting Fox to release the Futurama DVDs in the US.