Futurama Movie Set For November 27 308
kevin_conaway writes "TV Squad informs us that the new Futurama movie will be available on November 27. The show will return as a full-length, high-def film sold on DVD. It will be followed by three additional films, and each film will be divided into four episodes, each to be aired on Comedy Central. So, that's 4 DVD movies or 16 new episodes."
Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Any differences in the releases? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah and look how that turned out.
Don't forget (Score:5, Insightful)
All glory to the Hypno-Toad!
Re:I never really.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Networks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oblig. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Networks (Score:4, Insightful)
And take a show like Firefly. They only aired like 6 episodes total, in different time-slots, out of order, and never advertised the show. They aired a whopping 4 episodes of Drive, which got good reviews from pretty much every critic on the planet, and it was canceled.
I'm not a big fan of TV, and I was never a Whedon fan. I really hated Buffy and Angel, but Firefly was a damned good show. It sold like man on DVD to the point where they made a movie. Initial ratings aren't always indicative of the quality of the show. Jerry Springer was the highest rated show on the entire planet for a while, and so was Baywatch. And sometimes really good shows how poor ratings because no one knows anything about them. Even though Firefly sold well on DVD and was critically acclaimed, most people still haven't heard about the show.
That is poor advertising on the part of the network.
Jericho is another fine example. The network canceled it because of "poor ratings" and it had a huge fan-base who spent money out of pocket to take out an ad in Variety, and ship tons of peanuts to the network demanding the show be brought back. How were the ratings so poor with so many fans?
The Neilsen ratings often don't pick up on people who record shows with their DVR, and they also don't account for the people who watch the show on CBS.com so the ratings really didn't accurately reflect how large of a fan base the show actually had. If the networks were "experts" as you put it, they wouldn't lose so much money every year developing all these new shows that bomb. They wouldn't have canceled shows like Futurama, Firefly, Family Guy or Jericho in the first place when market demand for these shows was so high that they made more money after cancellation than before.
I know a guy (we're not close friends, but we have spoke on a few occasions) who wrote Grosse Point Blank. (Great friggin' movie) and he kept getting approached by the networks to do some TV work. He had some great stories. No one wanted to touch anything new, because it wasn't established and they had no way to determine if it would be successful or not. However they kept asking him to make "The Next Friends" show, because Friends was huge at the time. Every week when the new movies came out, whatever was big in the box office, they'd tell him to clone that.
Just because someone has money, that doesn't make them an expert. Far from it. As Kevin Smith said, "Hollywood is the only place where you fail upwards."
Is "specialist" humour more "subtle"? IMHO, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Simpsons *did* contain subtle humour in some areas. Whereas I feel Futurama's was very reliant upon parodying retro science fiction cliches and the old "aspects of present-day society given a futuristic twist" school of sci-fi comedy.
For my money, Futurama *never* felt like it would have the same universal appeal that The Simpsons managed so effectively. That's not to say that it was bad, but dakameleon put his (her?) finger on it very well when he said that The Simpsons had more characters people could identify with [slashdot.org].
FWIW, I feel that The Simpsons actually has more creativity and freedom than Futurama. On first glance you'd expect the opposite, as being set in a fantasy future it has the freedom to do anything. In reality, it's quite tied by its retro sci-fi roots and reliance upon parody, both of which limit it creatively and in terms of audience appeal.
This probably sounds like I think Futurama sucks; I don't. It's all relative- but there are sound and legitimate reasons why it's not- and never will be- as well-loved as The Simpsons.
Re:Oblig. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mmm! (Score:5, Insightful)
--HypnoToad
Re:I never really.. (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Networks (Score:3, Insightful)
As Kevin Smith said, "Hollywood is the only place where you fail upwards."
Ouch. Clearly spoken by someone who's only worked in Hollywood. As distressing and counter-intuitive as it may be in this culture, that's how it works in every industry that I've seen (notably software, computer games). The only place I haven't seen that happen severely is in my college teaching gigs.
Re:Don't forget (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotoad#Hypnotoad [wikipedia.org]
Re:Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I never really.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is all true for the majority of my friends (who I know from engineering school or my career in software). However, my girlfriend's friends and my family can only check off one or two items on that list. They'll get a few laughs, sure. But even though The Simpsons and Family Guy are mediocre by comparison, those two shows never leave the majority of people thinking "I don't get it..." Futurama is just a masterpiece with a small audience, so it has less earning power.
The good news is that with Video over IP finally becoming cheap, HTPCs starting to catch on, and the popularity of DVD sales and rentals; the cost of entry to the TV show market is plummeting. The future looks good for shows like Futurama
Re:Wrong again idiot! (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as it's good enough to see Amy's obscene tattoo it's high def enough for Futurama
Preview (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yay (Score:1, Insightful)