“Futurama” has been renewed for two more new seasons at Hulu, Variety has learned.
The revival of the beloved adult animated series has been picked up for an additional 20 episodes at the streaming service. Hulu had picked the show up for 20 episodes back in February 2022, the first 10 of which were released starting in July. The premiere date for the second batch of 10 from that order has yet to be announced, though it is expected to debut in 2024. The new order will bring the show to Seasons 13 and 14 (or 10 and 11 depending on how you break it down).
Hulu’s revival of the series marks the second time the show has been brought back since it originally launched in 1999. After its initial four-season run on Fox, reruns of the show found new life as part of the Adult Swim lineup on Cartoon Network and on DVD. Four direct-to-video films were then produced, which were later re-edited into a fifth season that aired on Comedy Central starting in 2008. Comedy Central would go on to air two more seasons consisting of 26 episodes each between 2010 and 2013.
The official description for the new season states, “After a brief ten-year hiatus, ‘Futurama’ has crawled triumphantly from the cryogenic tube, its full original cast and satirical spirit intact. The ten all-new episodes of season eleven have something for everyone. New viewers will be able to pick up the series from here, while long-time fans will recognize payoffs to decades-long mysteries – including developments in the epic love story of Fry and Leela, the mysterious contents of Nibbler’s litter box, the secret history of evil Robot Santa, and the whereabouts of Kif and Amy’s tadpoles. Meanwhile there’s a whole new pandemic in town as the crew explores the future of vaccines, bitcoin, cancel culture, and streaming TV.”
The entire main cast of the original series — John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr, and David Herman — returned for the new Hulu episodes. “Futurama” is created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen. Executive producers include Groening, Cohen, Ken Keeler, and Claudia Katz. 20th Television Animation is the studio.
“Futurama” is a key part of Hulu’s recently launched “Animayhem” brand, a hub on Hulu that serves as the home to the streamer’s expansive library of adult animation and anime content.
I hope the next season has content and not just pop culture references.
Yea i love futurama, but this latest season is just weird. The Dune episode was terrible. Im continuing to watch i as its a good background show while im at lunch at work, but I was surprised by how much I didnt like it. Was trying to figure out if pissibly it was related to the writers strike, because of how poor some of the jokes and references are
deleted by creator
While there were still quite a few good episodes, that was a good portion of the Comedy Central seasons as well. Thats nowhere being new.
… Futurama has always been about pop culture references, this can be seen literally from the first season.
Futurama has always had pop culture references, the original seasons were not about pop culture. Most references were decades old making them essentially history references, not pop culture references.
It wasn’t till the comedy central seasons that we had self-referential shit like Fry re-enacting the shut up and take my money meme.The above statement was incorrect. See below.
Yeaaaah let’s just have a covid 3019 episode…Thanks Space Obama.
I agree with you on all points, and the episode in question is a pop culture reference ridden pile of garbage, but the shut up and take my money meme does actually come from that episode. It’s not a reenactment
Well I’ll be damned, thanks for the correction.
They said not just pop culture references, not zero pop culture references.
Yes; I read that, too.
Your downvote count doubles every time you comment. Try again and see if the pattern holds up!
Oh no, my fake internet currency! What ever will I do?
Oh no it’s spreading to my comment, Fly you fool!
Honestly last season was not good. It was rehashed and had no life. Maybe if they get longer to script and come up with something clever and fresh.
Bitcoin COVID and just randomness. Was not good
There were definitely several painful episodes, but there were a couple good ones too. The final episode in the season was excellent in my opinion.
They finally hit a stride right there at the end!
If they had 26 episodes then it would have evened out and there’d be more gems. It can’t be easy write, get the episodes thru the board, get the actors to do it well, and still have good content after composing with executives and panels. But if they made more it’d be easier to overlook.
I’m only a few episodes in, but so far it doesn’t feel like the same show. I don’t want any more of this. Maybe some day I’ll finish this season… maybe not.
I felt the same. Felt like a different show. Dropped it after 2-3 episodes. It’s OK for things to end. I don’t know why they always try to milk series until they are just no good anymore. This idea that they need years and years of seasons just because some fans are asking for it is the wrong way to go about creating good original content.
They gave it a fantastic ending at the end of the last season, and they should have just let it die there.
tbh the futurama fanbase has started to become annoying. Same memes/sad episodes referenced over and over, constantly memeing to bring back the show etc.
The show was good, it ended, find a new hobby.
You do know why. 💰
True, true.
Watch episode 10 at least. The rest are very skippable.
There’s 2 or 3 good episodes in the season, mostly near the end. I stopped after the first 2 and waited until they were all out, then binged it. I’m glad I pushed through for the good ones, but I’m hoping for better next season
Did the same. I know there’s typically a gem in a season, but everything was so cringe topical.
I watch like ine episode a month and it feels just weird. It looks the same, it’s not simpsons bad, the jokes land sometimes, but i would be totally fine to not finish the season
Yeah, I was supremely disappointed with the whole season. It was just boring and humorless.
Agree
That was pretty predictable to be fair. I hate the fact that we can’t let shows just die, they have to be milked to death.
The first few seasons were gold. Now it’s Simpson just parroting what’s going on in the world.
Felt the same way. The soul was gone, the delivery felt off and stilted. The show just felt different. I kept on thinking to myself “they would have never done that or done it like that in the old show”.
Charm just isn’t there and I really wanted to like it. I even watched every episode twice and while there are some enjoyable moments the tone just is off-key enough it becomes frustrating because it’s close but not the same.
In particular as one example the universe simulation episode and particularly Bender’s actions (in the face of what he and the characters thought they meant would happen to him) just seemed out of character and random, like forced for the sake of delivering the point. As a speculative what-if machine episode it would have worked.
Yeah I concur. Like they are going through the motions but they just don’t have the passion. It’s a real shame.
It felt like they were old scripts. I still thought most of them were pretty good though.
Episode 9 has to be the most random Futurama episode ever. I did not like it.
The first two episodes were sorta alright… It gave me hope. That only made the rest of the season more of a letdown. It just got too wacky and topical without the subtlety and cleverness it used to have
It is really hard to stop and start something like this… Forget a writing team getting back in the groove of things, it’s like writing season one over and over again, but without the energy and freedom of building something new. Instead, you have a room still working out their dynamic, a ton of preexisting baggage, and a high bar to meet to live up to the height of the show’s quality + years of nostalgia
With 4 seasons in a row, the next one could be much stronger now that they have space (and hopefully learned we don’t want such direct modern references), and the next might be good enough to keep it going
Or, maybe Hulu will force them to pump it out on a shoestring budget and it’ll become a hollow cash grab using beloved IP until it’s so painful I avoid even the originals. That is Disney’s style these days, and I hear they just bought out Hulu…
Yeah pretty much. Disney will kill it. Think It just needs to stop
I’m not hopeful, but I want to see how this next season goes before signing petitions to stop. If nothing else, I want to give the original creators one last shot. The show was always jerked around by studios and the reboots had a terrible structure (they got more shows with the movie ready structure, but
Disney is such a massive conglomerate at this point that you never know how it’ll go. Long term, most things will get broken down and digested into slop, but Futurama is loved enough that they might get enough breathing room to hold it together for a while - at best long enough to give us a few solid seasons before ending things on their terms
I’m not an optimist, but I like to leave room for good things to happen. Every once in a while, something good comes out of our shitty systems
From Disney. Maybe but I do not hold hope
Yeah it was a bit corpse-rapey. Do like the new VA for Amy’s dad though.
Yeah no issues with any voices. I don’t think he’s Asian enough. Is that bad. Obviously the previous voice was just a very over the top stereotype
well considering he’s now voiced by an actual asian instead of billy west going over the top, uh…
Exactly. It’s so less pronounced. It’s good they got a proper actor.
Good news everyone!
To shreds, you say?
I see, and his wife?
To shreds, you say?
You lost the last 23 years of your life, but you still have Zoidberg. YOU ALL STILL HAVE ZOIDBERG
I dont even watch it and Im happy the fans got more time.
Oh my god, people here are so over theirself it’s so sad.
Enjoy it or stop watching. You don’t need to suffer.
I loved old Futurama, and I choose to watch the new episodes because I really like the show. Some more than others, that’s it. I’m really grateful they are making more episodes.
the only bad episode of futurama i watched was zapp gets cancelled and zoidberg and his movie relativr
Nice story, professor. Let’s get you back to your room now, okay?
h-wha?
Absurd. My wife and I quote this all the time.
I was getting worried there for a sec, especially after hearing Disney is trying to buy Hulu
I thought they already acquired it?
They own most of it, and want to buy it all and be sole owner. I think fox (maybe?) owns the remainder.
It was Comcast. 3 hours ago Disney purchased the 1/3 stake from Comcast lmfao.
I need to look it up, but I think Disney owns the former Fox portion and Comcast or some other cable company owns the remaining part that Disney doesn’t control.
You are correct. Comcast owns the rest.
Not anymore!
deleted by creator
But didn’t Disney buy Fox Entertainment? Not the news arm, though.
Ok, I went and googled just to be safe: The Walt Disney Company, which currently owns two-thirds of Hulu, is buying the remaining third from Comcast’s NBCUniversal to “further [its] streaming objectives.”
From Ars
Oh, ok. Thanks.
Disney bought Hulu, awhile ago actually.
Watching the new season made me wonder if I Futurama was ever actually good. Are my fond memories of the old episodes just nostalgia?
The joke that really illustrates how creatively bankrupt the new season was for me is the non-binary robot. It’s a joke I’d already heard before, complete with the same stand up framing. It was just someone seeing something funny online and just sticking it in their TV show completely wholesale. It got a laugh out of me just because I was surprised to see something so blatant.
Every time it’d do a “topical” episode, it was just them going to beat a dead horse whose bones were already bleaching. Late to the party on Amazon, Crypto, and NFTs, showing up with only the shallowest, most well trodden observations.
The Covid episode made me bail on the reboot altogether. It was the worst offender in every way that the season was bad, including the pacing of the episode.
All the episodes in the newest season resolve the plot in the last like thirty seconds of the episode. It’s like the writers kept writing until they ran out of runway, then just yelled, “oh crap!” and wrapped everything up as fast as they possibly could. Which is bizarre because the episodes are so full of tepid puns and “phone bad” boomer humor you would think the writers were starved for ideas.
Watching the new season made me wonder if I Futurama was ever actually good. Are my fond memories of the old episodes just nostalgia?
No, I started rewatching the old seasons and in my opinion the general quality of the jokes and writing was much higher then. The over-reliance on current-day events just doesn’t work for Futurama, either. But there were some good episodes. For example, I really liked the season finale, the anthology episode.
I think they can make it good again, if they just stick with what made Futurama great in the first place, instead of trying to recreate is into something new.
You perfectly described my thoughts on this season.
It seems like they are doing a Simpsons. They think about one semi good joke and write a whole episode around it.
If the quality is as good as the last season, i’d rather keep my money.
I feel like I’m in the minority when I say I was REALLY bored during this most recent season. The jokes just did not land, they tried too hard and tried to be meta too often. Also a lot of the jokes are making fun of modern things, as opposed to what it used to be, which was an exaggerated take on what the future could be. It also just seemed like a lot of the episodes were most “remember this episode from an earlier season? Well we’re doing it again but slightly different!”
I wish John DiMaggio had stuck to his guns.
I haven’t watched yet, this sounds like Futurama is being flanderized?
Cool, maybe they can make actually good episodes this time. Its so annoying how hulu shoved its dick into every title screen and gets constant references, it totally ruins the show
squeal! New Futurama!
…oh wait they’re just gonna dilute the quality even more… fuck
it won’t change the quality of the previous seasons. and unlike a narrative based show like game of thrones, bad later seasons don’t have any impact on the enjoyment of the overall show. just like the simpsons. no amount of terrible seasons now changes the gold that was seasons 2-8 (and debatably up to 12)
Sigh. Yeah
How did they dilute the quality in your opinion, please elaborate?
After the show came back, half the shows made me laugh. The other half were devoid of actual lols.
I´m sorry
Well I liked the last season and so did my wife. Even though it was certainly not the best season, enough people liked it so much Hulu ordered 2 more seasons. They would not do that if people did not like it. That’s what I’m telling the haters.
Velma got renewed for a new season, so obviously it is really good.
“At Hulu”. Then Disney shuts down Hulu, like next year.
Oh boy how much more can they assassinate Leela’s character
She was insufferable for 95% of the latest season
Can you explain why? I haven’t seen any of the new episodes-no Hulu
There were only like… 2 or 3 jokes around her character repeated a few times throughout the season.
- Leela is an alcoholic
- Leela is unfaithful to fry flirting with random men
- Leela has settled for fry
The new order will bring the show to Seasons 13 and 14 (or 10 and 11 depending on how you break it down).
I’ve heard this year’s season called either 8 or 11, but never 9 or 12. I wonder how this article was counting them.
Yeah. I think the article was counting the approved 8th (2023) and 9th (2024) seasons, adding 10th and 11th. Just wasn’t super clear first read and made it feel like 9th was current or all 20 episodes were a single season. That first paragraph is crappy.
We still have 10 more from the 20 approved episodes, and now 20 more on top of that. So an easy 3 years of futurama to look forward to. Yay!
