More Good News Everybody!

We have got confirmation today that Futurama will comeback with they’re original cast, also we have lots of news on new episodes from the Comic Con.

Firstly, the creators of the series say they are thrilled the animated show’s five original voice actors have agreed to stay on. Matt Groening and David X. Cohen praised the new deals reached by 20th Century Fox TV and series cast members John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal, Maurice LaMarche and Tress MacNeille, Variety reported Friday.

“We are thrilled to have our incredible cast back,” Groening and Cohen said in a statement. “The call has already gone out to the animators to put the mouths back on the characters.” The new deals for the comedy’s five voice actors come after 20th Century decided to resurrect the canceled animated series for 26 new episodes. The new episodes of “Futurama,” which originally aired from 1999 to 2003, are to air in mid-2010 on Comedy Central.

Variety said the contracts were reached after the two sides ironed out salary issues. Details were not reported.

And now onto the Comic Con, the voice cast were not present at the panel; however, showrunners Matt Groening and David X. Cohen were present, accompanied by writers and animators. Hypotoad was present to tell the audience to ignore the voice actors’ absence as the other news was yet not confirmed.

Both Matt and David adressed the issue; Matt said: “We love our ‘Futurama’ actors. We hope that Fox and the actors can come to an agreement as soon as possible.”; “Keep your fingers crossed. What’s going on right now is business” said David.

The good news, however, is that plenty of new information regarding the new season beginning next year was revealed.

The origins of Scruffy, the janitor will be revealed; Twitter will feature in an episode, controlled by Mom; Bender and Amy will get together, bringing up a robosexual marriage debate; The Professor and Fry find a time machine and end up in a very distant future; the reasons behind why the Professor hired Zoidberg will be revealed; Fry and Leela will be more romantic; Leela and Zapp will be together on an isolated planet; and a new Anthology of Interest episode is in the works.

A Futurama film for the big screen is also something Matt would love to do: “We’d love to do a Futurama theatrical feature, It’s really fun to see Futurama on the big screen”.

Futurama Might Get New Cast

When Futurama returns to TV next year, it might be without the show’s original voice cast. Talks have broken down between 20th Century Fox TV and stars Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, Maurice LaMarche and Tress MacNeille over how much they should be paid to take part in the show. The studio announced last month that it would produce 26 new episodes of Futurama, and that Comedy Central was on board to begin airing the new episodes in mid-2010. As part of the announcement, the show’s producers said stars including West, Sagal and DiMaggio had all signed on to return.

Turns out that wasn’t true. The stars had all expressed interest in returning. But with the budget for Futurama dramatically slashed, the salary offers came in well below what the thesps were asking. As a result, 20th has put out a casting call to find replacement voice actors for the show.

It’s not the first time 20th has gone that route during a tough negotiation on one of its toons. The studio previously made a similar move on The Simpsons when it couldn’t come to a deal with its stars. Casting feelers were sent out for replacements, but a deal was eventually made with the original cast. The situation is unusual this time around in that 20th and Comedy Central have been kicking around ways to make Futurama, originally produced for a broadcast network (Fox), make financial sense for a cable run. Yet there’s also still a possibility — and a window built in — for Futurama to run on a broadcast network first.

It’s believed that the Futurama cast members were asking for around $75,000 per episode; it was not clear what 20th was offering. Calls to the voice stars’ reps were not immediately returned. Other costs slashed in the process led to a smaller writing staff and a shorter delivery schedule.

“We love the ‘Futurama’ voice performers and absolutely wanted to use them, but unfortunately, we could not meet their salary demands,” 20th Century Fox TV said in a statement. “While replacing these talented actors will be difficult, the show must go on. We are confident that we will find terrific new performers to give voice to Matt and David’s brilliantly subversive characters.”

Good News Everybody! Futurama Is Back!

It’s been everywhere from Simpsons, Futurama, Nintedo (yes a Nitendo fansite) and Family Guy, fansites and even in the New York Times, but we can now confirm that it is all true.

Futurama is set to come back on Comedy Central in 2010 with 26 episodes. Futurama did originally come back in four different movies (4 part episodes) for Season 6 but this Season 7 come back will be even better.

Matt Groening and David Cohen said “We’re thrilled Futurama is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000.”