The on-again-off-again space adventure Futurama won’t be renewed by Comedy Central for another season. Will this finally be the end for the U.S.S. Planet Express Ship? As of now, yes, but there is always hope for Leena, Fry, Bender and the gang.
The producers say that they are exploring options for a new home for the show, but there are no serious talks at this point. “We’ve been in this situation before and it’s tempting when you’re doing episodes that are as good or better than anything you’ve ever done to continue doing it,” Groening tells EW.
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“It’d be a shame if we all went our separate ways… We would love to continue. We have many more stories to tell. But if we don’t, this is a really great way to go out… I think these episodes are the best ones we’ve ever done.”
Fans of the show are no strangers to cancellation. The series’ original four year run ended with it’s time slot being bumped more often than whatever comes after 60 Minutes during football season. When you have writers and producers doing their best work at a show’s end though, it’s easy to believe that someone will pick it up and run for a few more seasons. The popularity of the final 13 episodes, airing from June 19th to September 4th, will likely determine the fate of the show.
Fox and Adult Swim seem like potential landing points, but somewhere like SyFy could be possible as well. They’ve been trying reduce their number of terrible movies and expand the number of regular series, so why not Zoidberg?
Here is the announcement from Comedy Central:
“Futurama” rockets into space for the (second) final time as the Emmy® Award-winning series will conclude its long history with this summer’s all-new season. The thirteen-episode summer run will premiere on COMEDY CENTRAL with back-to-back episodes on Wednesday, June 19 at 10:00 p.m. with the emotional series finale scheduled for September 4. Special guest stars for the final season include Larry Bird, Dan Castellaneta, Sarah Silverman, George Takei, Adam West and Burt Ward. The show’s entire original voice cast will be returning. Including the yet-to-air season, this will bring the total number of episodes in “Futurama’s” storied history to 140.