Fry, Leela, and the Planet Express crew have had their fair share of ups and downs throughout Futurama’s history as it was cancelled and brought back.
Matt Groening’s other smash hit animated comedy, Futurama, just won’t seem to die. The series has persisted for 25 years, through multiple cancelations and changes in where it has aired.
Fortunately for fans of the laugh-a-minute sci-fi ‘toon, Futurama hasn’t seemed to have lost a step despite all that instability.
The Early Years of Futurama
By the mid-1990s, The Simpsons was televisual yellow gold. The primetime animated sitcom’s exacting blend of raucous gags, irreverent wit, and genuinely heartfelt moments lit its time slot on fire and cemented the titular nuclear family as household names.
Naturally, Fox wanted more. The network had been on Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s case about developing another animation to air on the network, and the eventual result was Futurama, a science-fiction-based comedy program set in the 31st century.
It’s worth noting that Groening and producing partner David X. Cohen had a Robot Devil of a time getting Futurama to the airwaves (and experienced even more pushback from Fox for several years after). But on March 28, 1999, Futurama Season 1, Episode 1 “Space Pilot 3000” debuted.
The show continued its run on Fox for four seasons, but in 2003, the network simply decided to unceremoniously cease ordering new episodes of Futurama. As Matt Groening put it at the time, “I didn't even get a begrudging phone call from anyone at Fox” (Via Chortle).
A Second Life for Futurama
Just like that, Futurama was a series without a proper home. Fortunately, it had been popular enough during its run and had accumulated enough episodes to be appealing enough to syndicators. In 2003, Cartoon Network picked it up for their nightly Adult Swim block, which was where things began to turn around.
Through frequent reruns on Adult Swim, Futurama was able to pick up a sizable new audience — so sizable that other parties became quite interested in producing more of the show. Comedy Central entered negotiations with Fox about new Futurama content in 2005 and four new direct-to-DVD movies were announced.
Those four movies, Bender’s Big Score, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender’s Game, and Into the Wild Green Yonder hit retail shelves from 2008 to 2009.
This strategy proved quite rewarding — so much so that in 2010, an all-new season of Futurama (labeled as Season 6, as the four films served as the fifth season and were also re-edited into four episodes apiece) premiered on Comedy Central.
Then, three years later in 2013, the show was canceled once again after Season 7. And that seemed to be it, at the time anyway.
Futurama’s Third Act on Hulu
So, Futurama had ended for a second time. It concluded on a rather poignant note as well, which explored Fry’s time-travel-influenced proposal to Leela and their eventual life together, only for time to get reset in the closing minutes of the series.
For a long while, that seemed to be it, and many fans seemed more than fine with that. After all, the story was wrapped up in a satisfying fashion and there were several seasons’ worth of episodes to revisit.
But then, in February 2022, the startling announcement was made that Hulu was developing even more episodes of Futurama for its streaming platform.
The fanbase was understandably surprised by this unexpected revelation. A large portion of said fanbase was also firmly against the prospect of another continuation.
Nevertheless, the series re-entered production (with some “ambitous” visual upgrades) with the entire original cast (including Bender actor John DiMaggio, who was in a salary dispute with Disney over his participation) reprising their roles. Season 8 dropped on Hulu from July to September 2023.
And on July 29, 2024, another batch of episodes (Season 9) hit Hulu. Moreover, Futurama was renewed by the streamer through 2026.
Executive producer David X. Cohen spoke with Gizmodo about the little show that could, making special mention of the “continuity behind the scenes:”
“One of the other things I will say that allows the show to come back again and again is there’s been a lot of continuity behind the scenes. Many of the same animators and producers at Rough Draft Studios, for example, our entire voice cast has stayed with the show throughout, which has been super critical and a little bit lucky statistically, probably. And then, even the writers, even now, the writing staff is at least half writers [who] have been there on and off for 20-plus years, and [we also] have newer people who came to the show as fans.”
The latest season of Futurama is now available on Hulu.
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