Long Live Futurama
Interviews with Cast Members John Dimaggio, Phil Lamarr, and Billy West
Two decades after its debut — and despite being canceled three times — Futurama, Matt Groening’s futuristic cartoon, still looms large in terms of influence and impact. This show, set in the 31st century about a group of coworkers, has incredibly out-there stories that run through tons of plot points and shove tons of story into twenty minute chunks. The show creates emotional beats for characters that are humans, robots, aliens, and animals; and from a scripting standpoint I find that quite impressive! More so than Groening’s first show, The Simpsons, Futurama has niche appeal to people who would consider themselves nerds. Before Futurama, I’m not really sure where a sci-fi fan would look for comedy. And today, it’s influence is definitely felt in shows like the immensely popular Rick & Morty. Even though its last new episode aired on Comedy Central in 2014, Futurama has lived on in ways and new media showing that the show’s incredible appeal (as well as its fanbase) is still going strong.
So what has inspired fans and the creators to hang onto and keep fighting for a show, whose initial production process was incredibly difficult? In phone interviews with cast members, John Dimaggio, Phil Lamarr, and Billy West, we discussed what is responsible for Futurama’s enduring spirit and what happens when a show truly connects with an audience.
When Futurama premiered in March 1999, it was the number-one show among men aged 18–49 and teenagers for the week and had more viewers during its premiere week than The Simpsons and The X-Files. Reviews compared this latest Groening product to The Simpsons but remained hopeful that the show would differentiate itself from Fox’s other cartoon. And it did. Futurama’s complex plot structure and sophisticated joke-telling landed the show four Emmy nominations and one win, for Outstanding Animated Program, during the show’s initial run on Fox.
Despite its acclaim and appreciation, Futurama’s time slot was shifted constantly during its third and fourth seasons. Fox put Futurama production on hiatus in February 2002. An irate Groening told the Calgary Sun in 2003: “The people at Fox didn’t ever support the show and it wasn’t to their taste and, in my opinion, they’re out of their minds. But they don’t like The Simpsons either. The idea of a TV show that they haven’t gotten their greasy fingers all over creatively drives them nuts. We won the Emmy for animated show and I didn’t even get a begrudging phone call from anyone at Fox.”
The clash between executives and creatives was felt outside of the writing room as well. In a recent phone interview with the Paley Center, cast member Phil Lamarr said: “They couldn’t take credit for the success of The Simpsons. They didn’t give Matt a job, Matt gave them a job! It’s executhink! They definitely crapped on Futurama because it was not another Simpsons. I will always wonder why Futurama was not put on after The Simpsons.”
One year before the creation of Facebook, Futurama fans handed the Fox network a renewal petition with over 130,000 signatures. However, no new episodes were ordered for the 2003–2004 season.
The show picked up steam during reruns on Adult Swim between 2004 and 2007. Unlike Fox, Adult Swim would advertise and broadcast Futurama episodes in the order in which they were produced and in a consistent time slot. Adult Swim would also program Futurama marathons, recognition of the show’s “binge-ability.” Perhaps, Futurama may have always been better suited for a smaller, cable outlet; compared with The Simpsons.
With wackier stories, perhaps Futurama had fewer opportunities for guest stars to appear as themselves and promote their own brand, and while Fox executives may have wished that the two shows were carbon copies of each other, it was clear the styles of humor were different, thanks to more dynamic characters crafted outside the traditional sitcom family roles, the zany futuristic setting, and Futurama’s frequent impulse to challenge the notion of watching television in a less family-friendly way than The Simpsons. In the early 2000’s, Futurama was providing viewers an experience they could not find elsewhere on television.
After its first cancellation, passionate calls from fans to save the show were constant. “When Matt Groening dials your phone you always pick up the call,” said Lamarr, and on April 26, 2006, Groening stated that numerous people, including fellow cocreator David X. Cohen and many writers and actors, were returning to make four direct-to-DVD movies, which would later be aired in thirty-minute chunks on television. These movies feel different from the rest of the series, for good reason: the writers were forced to conform to an odder, four-act structure. Never meant to have the same scale as a theatrical release, Season 5 of Futurama may have been created solely for the purpose of pushing physical media and Futurama as a bankable brand rather than as a TV show. Nevertheless, fans were gifted with more of the sharp animated comedy they loved and had fought for. The first of the Futurama direct-to-DVD movies, Bender’s Big Score, grossed just under $4 million in its first week, and all four films grossed over $32 million during their physical media releases between 2007 and 2009. The fifth season of Futurama, which encompasses the direct-to-DVD movies, produced in 2007, 2008, and 2009, was awarded the Annie Award for Best Home Entertainment Production for all those years.
It’s rare that a cartoon is able to provide meaningful, gut-wrenching moments. Fry and Leela’s evolving relationship is more than a “Will They or Won’t They?” TV trope. It’s about two strangers working together in a strange land. It’s challenging too. Famously, writer-producer Ken Keeler holds a Ph.D. in applied mathematics and invented a new theorem to solve a plot point for the episode “Prisoner of Benda.” “We were given the opportunity to push the envelope, but not in a desire to be dirty, but more complexity,” lead cast member Billy West told the Paley Center. “There were jokes in Futurama that had more layers than an onion.”
Four months after the final Futurama film, Into the Great Green Yonder, was released on DVD, 20th Century Fox announced that Comedy Central had picked up the show for twenty-six new half-hour episodes, which began airing in mid-2010. Executives Gary Newman and Dana Walden were quoted in the press release: “Futurama was another series that fans simply demanded we bring back.” Following Fox’s announcement, cast members and Fox entered weeks of intense salary negotiations, and in July 2009 the network announced a casting call to replace the current cast. The two parties reached a compromise agreement, with the studio paying more and the actors accepting less. “I always thought Bender should be selling beer. I thought it was a wasted opportunity as far as merchandising. There should be ten times the amount of toys there are,” said cast member John DiMaggio who voices the fan-favorite, drunken robot Bender. Nevertheless, Futurama once again persisted.
Futurama finally found a better home. When Futurama first aired June 24, 2010, on Comedy Central, it scored the network its highest-rated night of the year and its highest-rated Thursday prime-time rating in the network’s history. “Once we got on Comedy Central everything changed. People started seeing it. The show became a real cult success,” said DiMaggio. “This whole time we were in this creative groove, the jokes were brilliant and the characters were changing in all the right direction; they started to really breathe.” Comedy Central gave the creative team space, and it showed. Lamarr said, “With Matt Groening, it’s not science. Lasting for generations was not his goal, but a byproduct of him staying true to his voice.” He continued, “I thought the Comedy Central episodes were better written than the episodes that were originally on Fox.” And upon second (and third and fourth) viewings, he might be right. When a show is this clever and funny, it’s more a matter of preference.
After two twenty-six-episode orders, Comedy Central announced in April 2013 that it would be airing the final episode of the show in September of that year. The Variety announcement naturally stated: “Futurama is coming to an end … again.” And so the show’s finale came and went with another episode meant to elicit both tears and laughs. It was Futurama’s fourth series finale and another episode scripted to give closure with a window cracked open. “In that room, we would laugh so hard we were brought to tears. I miss working with those people every day,” said DiMaggio.
Today, the show lives on in different modes. A radio episode produced by Nerdist appeared online in 2017, and that same year Futurama released a freemium game on iOS and Android with new storylines and written material. The audio-only episode and Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow, the highly addictive mobile game that’s one part Farmville and one part Pokémon, are welcome additions to Futurama’s greater universe. Reruns appear daily on Comedy Central, and an official Simpsons-Futurama crossover aired in 2014. Futurama cast members Billy West and John DiMaggio are featured in Groening’s latest show, Disenchantment, for Netflix, featuring a similar animation style.
Even more, the show lives on at sci-fi and comedy conventions. “I got about seven conventions this year. More and more people are coming to these conventions and people always want to talk about Futurama,” said DiMaggio. And miraculously, Futurama continues to find new audiences: “And it’s all the same things the first fans were affected by. They like Zoidberg’s ‘Woop Woop,’ but they don’t realize that was based on a Three Stooges bit. I get to introduce that to them,” added West.
Perhaps it's not so miraculous at all: a brilliantly funny show finding audiences across generations. Futurama made the viewer and its creative staff feel something during its on-again-off-again run on television. For 140 episodes, Futurama evoked feeling and encouraged in-jokes. All three cast members I spoke to gushed and said they’d love to be a part of more Futurama if the opportunity arose, and in a not-so-bold prediction, I think it will. I’m sure we’ll be seeing new episodes of Futurama on the airwaves soon.
Paley Matters is a publication of The Paley Center for Media.
Nick Shaerf is a curatorial intern at The Paley Center for Media. He is a senior at NYU Tisch studying television writing.
