“Futurama” has been renewed for two more new seasons at Hulu, Variety has learned.
The revival of the beloved adult animated series has been picked up for an additional 20 episodes at the streaming service. Hulu had picked the show up for 20 episodes back in February 2022, the first 10 of which were released starting in July. The premiere date for the second batch of 10 from that order has yet to be announced, though it is expected to debut in 2024. The new order will bring the show to Seasons 13 and 14 (or 10 and 11 depending on how you break it down).
Hulu’s revival of the series marks the second time the show has been brought back since it originally launched in 1999. After its initial four-season run on Fox, reruns of the show found new life as part of the Adult Swim lineup on Cartoon Network and on DVD. Four direct-to-video films were then produced, which were later re-edited into a fifth season that aired on Comedy Central starting in 2008. Comedy Central would go on to air two more seasons consisting of 26 episodes each between 2010 and 2013.
The official description for the new season states, “After a brief ten-year hiatus, ‘Futurama’ has crawled triumphantly from the cryogenic tube, its full original cast and satirical spirit intact. The ten all-new episodes of season eleven have something for everyone. New viewers will be able to pick up the series from here, while long-time fans will recognize payoffs to decades-long mysteries – including developments in the epic love story of Fry and Leela, the mysterious contents of Nibbler’s litter box, the secret history of evil Robot Santa, and the whereabouts of Kif and Amy’s tadpoles. Meanwhile there’s a whole new pandemic in town as the crew explores the future of vaccines, bitcoin, cancel culture, and streaming TV.”
The entire main cast of the original series — John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr, and David Herman — returned for the new Hulu episodes. “Futurama” is created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen. Executive producers include Groening, Cohen, Ken Keeler, and Claudia Katz. 20th Television Animation is the studio.
“Futurama” is a key part of Hulu’s recently launched “Animayhem” brand, a hub on Hulu that serves as the home to the streamer’s expansive library of adult animation and anime content.
The first two episodes were sorta alright... It gave me hope. That only made the rest of the season more of a letdown. It just got too wacky and topical without the subtlety and cleverness it used to have
It is really hard to stop and start something like this... Forget a writing team getting back in the groove of things, it's like writing season one over and over again, but without the energy and freedom of building something new. Instead, you have a room still working out their dynamic, a ton of preexisting baggage, and a high bar to meet to live up to the height of the show's quality + years of nostalgia
With 4 seasons in a row, the next one could be much stronger now that they have space (and hopefully learned we don't want such direct modern references), and the next might be good enough to keep it going
Or, maybe Hulu will force them to pump it out on a shoestring budget and it'll become a hollow cash grab using beloved IP until it's so painful I avoid even the originals. That is Disney's style these days, and I hear they just bought out Hulu...
Yeah pretty much. Disney will kill it. Think It just needs to stop
I'm not hopeful, but I want to see how this next season goes before signing petitions to stop. If nothing else, I want to give the original creators one last shot. The show was always jerked around by studios and the reboots had a terrible structure (they got more shows with the movie ready structure, but
Disney is such a massive conglomerate at this point that you never know how it'll go. Long term, most things will get broken down and digested into slop, but Futurama is loved enough that they might get enough breathing room to hold it together for a while - at best long enough to give us a few solid seasons before ending things on their terms
I'm not an optimist, but I like to leave room for good things to happen. Every once in a while, something good comes out of our shitty systems
From Disney. Maybe but I do not hold hope