Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Futurama

Futurama aired from March 1999 until October 2003 on Fox.

Fry ( voice of Billy West)was a somewhat dense, 25-year-old delivery boy for Panucci's Pizza's who took an order to Applied Cryogenics and accidentally fell into one of the company's capsules. One thousand years later he emerged to begin a new life in New York in the year3000. He was befriended by Leela ( Katey Sagal), a worker at the crynogenics company; Bender ( John DiMaggio), a sarcastic robot who got his name from bending steel girders; and elderly professor Farnsworth ( Billy West), Fry;s frail, eccentric, great-great-great-etc nephew. Together they traveled the Cosmos delivering merchandise for Planet Express, encountering all sorts of strange creatures. Leela, a sexy one-eyed alien martial-arts expert served as their ship's captain, while Bender , who drank like a fish and smoked big cigars , was addicted to pornography. Amy ( Lauren Tom), one of Farnsworth's engineering students was an intern with the company and went on some of their delivery runs, and Hermes ( Phil LaMarr) was one of their co-workers. On their much-changed Earth they were confronted by many reminders of " ancient times" including jars containing the preserved talking heads of celebrities like Dick Clark, Leonard Nimoy, and Richard Nixon.

Created by Matt Goening, creator of The Simpsons whose head was seen in one of those jars.

In the summer of 2006 , it was announced that Comedy Central had contracted for production of 13 new episodes to premiere in 2008.

An Article from The New York Times

TELEVISION / RADIO; Groening's New World, 1,000 Years From Springfield

By ANITA GATES
Published: January 24, 1999

MATT GROENING looks like an ordinary guy, sitting at an ocean-view table at Shutters on the Beach. At 44, he has a little gray, a little paunch and the attention to fashion of a successful hardware salesman (knit shirt and khakis). People at the hotel's restaurant are paying more attention to Tom Hanks, who is having brunch with a large group across the room. But Mr. Groening (pronounced graining) is the man who created Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and the laconic infant Maggie Simpson, and he is not unaware of how much clout that gives him, especially as he prepares to introduce his first new series since ''The Simpsons'' became a half-hour comedy in 1990.

Selling the idea for ''Futurama,'' which is scheduled for a March premiere on Fox, was a little easier than selling ''The Simpsons,'' he admits. This time ''I basically breezed through the door with Peter Roth,'' says Mr. Groening, referring to the recently departed president of Fox Entertainment.

Still, network executives were a little nervous about the new animated show, because it didn't seem as much like Mr. Groening's first series as they would have liked. ''I told them, 'It is like 'The Simpsons,' '' says Mr. Groening. '' 'It's new and original.' ''

''Futurama'' is set in the year 3000 in New New York City, which is built atop the ruins of the original New York. Ruins? ''Alien invasion,'' Mr. Groening says matter-of-factly. The Empire State Building is still around, but only the top 22 floors and the observation tower. There are no more pigeons in the city because they've been wiped out by owls. ''They're cute owls, too,'' Mr. Groening adds.

The characters in ''Futurama'' have familiar, Simpsonian bulging eyes and overbites but unlike the Simpsons and their Springfield neighbors, as Mr. Groening points out, their skin is not yellow. Any particular reason? ''Evolution.'' And of course there are aliens living in New York, ''just like now.''

One of the show's main characters is Fry, a human earthling who was accidentally frozen on Dec. 31, 1999, and wakes up on Dec. 31, 2999, in a strange new world. His best friend is Leela, a cyclops space-alien woman. They're often seen with Bender, a ''very corrupt robot'' who is not happy with his career programming and wants to be a cook. In the future, ''people are definitely slotted at a very young age because of testing,'' Mr. Groening explains, ''but these tests are right.''

''Futurama'' comes to television in an environment for prime-time animation that is very different from the one ''The Simpsons'' faced. In 1989 there hadn't been a hit prime-time network animated series since ''The Flintstones.'' In 1999, adult viewers have ''King of the Hill'' on Fox; ''South Park,'' ''Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist'' and ''Bob and Margaret'' on Comedy Central; and ''Daria,'' a ''Beavis and Butt-head'' spinoff, on MTV. And at least three network animated series (''Dilbert,'' ''Family Guy'' and Eddie Murphy's ''P. J.'s'') have premieres this month. ''The Critic'' didn't make it on ABC in 1994 but lives on on cable. With this kind of overload, is even Mr. Groening's genius a guarantee of success?

''There are no guarantees,'' says Mike Darnell, Fox's executive vice president for specials and alternative programming (which includes animated shows), ''but I think it has a wonderful shot.''

''We're not looking at animated shows as animated anymore,'' he adds. ''They're just comedy. No matter how much animation comes on the scene, it's going to be survival of the funniest.''

Mr. Groening, who has so far ranked among the funniest, grew up in Portland, Ore., the son of an advertising executive whose claim to fame was the creation of the Jantzen Smile Girl competition, a national beauty contest for a swimsuit company. After graduating from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., the young Mr. Groening moved to Los Angeles to become a writer. He was 28 when he began drawing ''Life in Hell,'' a comic strip (sometimes described as ''bleakly humorous'') about Jeff and Akbar, two affectionate fez-wearing look-alikes, and two rabbits named Binky and Bongo. Once asked whether Jeff and Akbar were brothers or a gay couple or what, Mr. Groening answered, ''Whatever offends you the most.'' By the late 1980's, the strip was syndicated in 200 newspapers.

But it was ''The Simpsons'' that changed Mr. Groening's life. The characters began as short cartoons on Fox's ''Tracey Ullman Show'' in 1987. The characters had their own television special, ''Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,'' in December 1989, followed a month later by the premiere of the half-hour series. By spring, the Simpsons were the hottest names in merchandising and licensing, being compared to other big names of the year like the Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles and New Kids on the Block.

Naturally, everyone was worried when in fall 1990 the show was moved to Thursday nights opposite ''The Cosby Show,'' a solid hit that had been the No. 1 prime-time series since 1985. But the Cosby popularity was slipping, now that several of the show's young characters had grown up, and rather than being vanquished ''The Simpsons'' turned the situation into a ratings war. Both shows lost viewers, and in 1992 ''The Cosby Show'' went off the air. ''The Simpsons'' remained on Thursday nights until 1994, when it moved back to Sundays. It has been there, and Mr. Groening has been reaping the benefits, ever since.

He looks a little more mogul-like after brunch when the parking attendant brings his black BMW convertible and he calls his housekeeper on the car speakerphone to check on whether the waves are threatening to engulf the Malibu house. He drives to the ''Futurama'' office on Sepulveda Boulevard where at least a dozen employees are working on Sunday, even though the premiere is months away. ''Our crunch is six months before it goes on the air,'' explains David Cohen, the executive producer. In the editing room, Mr. Cohen and two other employees are playing various versions of one line: ''Leela, it's real velour. Just let yourself go.'' They are taking the creation of this future world very seriously, he says. One staff person is currently worried about whether the crescent of the moon looks exactly the way it really will 1,000 years from now.

Claudia Katz, the producer at Rough Draft, the Glendale animation studio for the series, stresses, ''It can't just be 'The Simpsons' in space.'' Some episodes will be set on Earth; some won't. A brief film clip, in fact, looks a little like a scene from ''The Fifth Element,'' Luc Besson's futuristic 1997 thriller in which Bruce Willis drove a flying Manhattan taxi.

Around Ms. Katz, a building full of people (Mr. Groening calls it ''Santa's workshop'') are hard at work, drawing ''Futurama'' characters following guidelines in the 72-page Character Construction Model Pack like ''Try to avoid showing Fry's gums'' and ''Bender's body is shaped like a Slurpee cup.'' One scene shows a 31st-century product advertisement: ''Robo Fresh. Designed by a robot. For a robot.''

A tour of the office also introduces new characters like Professor Farnsworth, who looks like a cross between Mr. Burns and Grandpa Simpson. There are new revelations about other characters, like Fry's habit of keeping a 20-pound bag of Bachelor Chow in his apartment and the news that Bender the robot, according to Ms. Katz, drinks, smokes and has ''a horrible pornography problem.''

Mr. Groening sums up the ''Futurama'' personae. ''It's a small group of characters who really don't fit in'' in the legislated conformity of the future, he says. ''They do what they want to do.''

So the message of the series is about the value of individuality and being true to oneself? Mr. Groening nods, then quickly says, ''I can't believe I have a message.''

A Review from Time Magazine

Futurama
Monday, Mar. 29, 1999 By GINIA BELLAFANTE Article

Should the most biting joke in an animated comedy about Manhattan in the year 3000 be that the city's airport has been re-named the John F. Kennedy Jr.? Probably not, but we don't get much more than that in Futurama, the latest from Simpsons' creator Matt Groening. The show lacks the vision of The Simpsons, the snappy rhythm and the kind of far-reaching humor that keep it dizzyingly smart even after a decade on the air. Is there anything good to say about Futurama? Sure, it's better than Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza.

--By Ginia Bellafante

A Review from Entertainment Weekly
Published on April 2, 1999

TV Review
Futurama
A By Ken Tucker
This week, HBO's The Sopranos pulls off a corker of a season ender, even as Fox's Futurama — the first new project from cartoonist Matt Groening since The Simpsons — achieves a terrific blastoff.

''You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do'' is the ominous motto for Futurama's America in the year 3000, as 1999 pizza-delivery boy Fry (voiced by Ren & Stimpy's Billy West) discovers when he cryogenically defrosts in the future. He befriends a grouchy, beer-guzzling robot, Bender (John DiMaggio), and a one-eyed alien female, Leela (Married...With Children's Katey Sagal), and with them, he explores a sleek but still-screwed-up country in which the citizenry are implanted with ''career chips'' that define the rest of their lives. While the Simpsons-esque animation is eye-poppingly cheerful, the message Groening is sending out is subversively bleak. (Instead of phones on the corner, there are ''suicide booths,'' in which you can off yourself for a quarter.)

Groening, deeply influenced by the paranoid fantasies of writer Philip K. Dick, the dystopian surrealism of the Firesign Theatre, and every cornball sci-fi movie, creates an airy atmosphere ripe for satirizing our love of computer technology. Fry is like a post-adolescent Bart Simpson, his anarchic tendencies a little worn down, but still plucky. All this, plus jabs at Richard Nixon and a police force armed with Star Wars-style lightsabers with which to pummel the public — ahh, it's too bad sci-fi fan Stanley Kubrick didn't live to see Groening's gloriously vibrant deconstruction of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Meanwhile, back in the present, Bruce Springsteen croons the chorus of ''State Trooper'' at the end of this week's finale of the wickedly funny, piercingly insightful Sopranos. The singer's plea — ''Please don't stop me'' — has become the motto of the series' chief protagonist, New Jersey Mob captain Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini in what is likely to remain the dramatic performance of the year. Like the Boss, Sopranos creator David Chase has an abiding sympathy for workaday people and deploys their simple, direct language and actions to summon up truths about family, trust, and honor. In Tony's case, he doesn't want to be stopped by any number of things: by the government agents tailing him, by the middle-class constraints of his wife (Oz's Edie Falco) and kids (Jamie Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler), by the fractious behavior of the Mob cronies who are his dearest friends and worst betrayers.

Early on in the episode, the script calls for Tony to make a Boss wisecrack. A Fed whose unit has been taping Tony's associates tells him, ''There's something we want you to hear.'' Tony shoots back: ''The Springsteen box set? I already got it.'' But that's just nervous bravado — by this time, he's been shaken by the ultimate betrayal: He's pretty sure that his mother (Nancy Marchand), and his uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) have ordered his death. Why? Because the anxiety-attacked Tony's been seeing a therapist (Lorraine Bracco's Dr. Melfi), and they're afraid he's blabbed too much family business to an outsider.

The ironies spun here are dizzying: Tony may die because he can't share worries and fears a normal son would be able to vouchsafe to his mother — in this case his embittered, possibly demented, but more likely crazy-like-a-fox mother — and must go outside both the family and the Family to find comfort and advice. (A stunned, Prozac- and lithium-dosed Tony moans, ''What kind of person can I be where his own mother wants him dead?'')

With all due respect to Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas, The Sopranos is the first piece of popular art to spin something entirely fresh from the crime-family dynamics that Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola laid out in The Godfather. The comic contrast between Tony's down-and-dirty 9-to-5 and his staid suburban haven is both endlessly rich and artfully negotiated.

In a recent interview with the online mag Salon, Chase said that in this show, ''people talk to each other and they really aren't communicating. That's what happens in life.'' Exactly: The Sopranos thrives on misunderstandings and (sometimes literally) strangled sentiments, which in turn lead to the hurt feelings and rages that propel its fleet narratives.

The equally energetic Futurama deserves a Simpsons-size audience, and The Sopranos' HBO cult can only grow: It's renewed for another season, with reruns of these first 13 episodes to start June 9. With visions as unique as those of Groening and Chase making the small screen as artistically exciting as any area of pop culture, the future looks downright rosy.
Futurama: A
The Sopranos: A

An Article from Entertainment Weekly
Published on April 12, 1999

Television News
Groening Aboard
John DiMaggio, the man behind the loutish robot Bender, gives EW Online an inside peek at Matt Groening's new animated series
By Sandra P. Angulo

''Simpsons'' creator Matt Groening's new animated series ''Futurama'' (Tuesdays, 8:30 p.m.) is giving Fox a reason to yell ''Woo Hoo.'' With impressively high ratings (it debuted at No. 6, with 19 million viewers) and glowing reviews (EW gave it an ''A''), ''Futurama'' already has a captive audience. John DiMaggio, the voice of the obnoxious, alcohol-spewing robot Bender, tells EW Online that the comic timing onscreen reflects the actors' off-camera humor. A former stand-up comedian from New Jersey, DiMaggio, 30, had bit parts in ''Chicago Hope,'' the short-lived ''Common Law,'' and dozens of prime-time commercials before scoring his ''Futurama'' role last summer.

Bender is being called ''Futurama'''s Bart -- the first breakout character of the show. What kind of pressure does that put on you?
People are always talking to me about how Bender's the breakout character -- ''Look out for the robot, blah blah blah'' -- and that's really complimentary. But I look at it like this: Bender's the go-to guy. When it comes to the jokes, he's a slugger, but everyone else in the cast is just as funny. It's just that my loudmouth character is, well, the loudest. I'm just excited about going into a Toys R Us one day with my nieces and nephews and pulling a string on a Bender doll and hearing my voice say, ''Up Yours.''

A bunch of comedians working together conjures up an image of clown school. Is that what it's like?
Maurice LaMarche, who works for us once in a while, is the Brain from ''Pinky and the Brain,'' and Billy West (the lead character, Fry) used to work on Howard Stern's radio show. They do the funniest imitations of everybody. Maurice does a dead-on Orson Welles, and he'll quote verbatim from this underground tape of Welles between takes of an English commercial: ''This is bull----.'' And Billy does imitations from his Stern days, like Marge Schott and Evil Jay Leno. That keeps us all laughing.

When ''The Simpsons'' cast wanted raises people joked that voice casts have it easy. How hard is your job?
It's an easy two-day week for us when things go smoothly, which they always do. For the production side it's nightmarishly never ending. Matt Groening says it takes up to six months to make every episode. I mean, these guys have to fly stuff to Korea to have it animated there, and with our computer animation, it's pretty unbelievable how much work goes into it beyond our voices.

Since you're doing animation, nobody knows what you look like. What are you doing to get your face out there?
Hey, I don't mind the anonymity. Besides, I'm out there -- it's pilot season. This May I have a TNT movie coming out (''Pirates of Silicon Valley'') with Noah Wyle where I play Microsoft president Steve Ballmer. I didn't get to meet the rich guys, but hey, maybe after the movie comes out.

An Article from USA TODAY
Published on May 5, 2003

'Futurama' hits DVD, but show comes to close
By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY

Matt Groening is a proud papa. The Simpsons just celebrated its 300th episode, but he's especially pleased to see his other animated child, Futurama, get its day in the sun.

A first-season DVD will be out March 25, new fans are finding reruns on Cartoon Network (Sunday-Thursday, 11 p.m. ET/PT) and a few fresh episodes remain to run on Fox, even though the sci-fi satire has ended production.

"I've gotten more response since it's been on Cartoon Network than in its years on Fox," Groening says. "It's so refreshing to have a network that appreciates the show."

As The Simpsons heads toward its 15th season, Futurama faces early retirement because of inconsistent scheduling and, Groening says, a lack of promotion. The Emmy-winning Futurama, which premiered in 1999, follows Fry (Billy West), a pizza-delivery guy who gets frozen and thaws out 1,000 years later. He goes to work for a futuristic delivery service, joining Leela (Katey Sagal), a one-eyed alien, and Bender (John DiMaggio), a robot with human frailties.

The Fox Home Entertainment DVD ($39.98) includes commentary on the first 13 episodes by Groening, executive producer David X. Cohen, West and DiMaggio.

"They're wild parties, these commentaries," Groening says. "Billy and John sing along with the theme and make up their own lyrics and talk in their characters' voices."

Groening says the last of Futurama's 72 episodes will provide some closure, but he wishes the show could have continued: "We had so many more stories we were eager to tell."

He won't make comparisons between his animated progeny, except for one nod to Futurama: "It's definitely better animated."

An Interview with Matt Groening from Entertainment Weekly, published on September 22, 2004

Television News
31st-Century Boy
More Matt Groening on ''Futurama'''s demise -- In an extended online version of his Enterainment Weekly interview, the ''Simpsons'' creator reflects on his ill-fated sci-fi cartoon, out now on DVD... and Comedy Central
More
By Josh Wolk

''Matt Groening's ''Futurama'' was like a shooting star: It was very bright, but you had to really look for it. Fox hid the cartoon sci-fi comedy on Sunday nights at 7 p.m., rarely promoted it, and so often pre-empted it that fans didn't know where to find it. But now, with its final episodes just released on DVD (''Futurama: Volume Four''), we asked Groening to reflect on his creation, the funniest show of the 31st century.

What do you think ''Futurama'''s legacy will be?
What I like about the show is that it continues to be discovered by new fans every day...and in about 1,000 years I think it will finally be properly appreciated.

Reruns get great ratings on the Cartoon Network. Any chance of a ''Family Guy''-like resurrection for ''Futurama''?
We're trying to figure it out. If we can do more episodes, we'd love to. It's a very ambitious show, and it's very expensive. That's been a sticking point. What [co-developer] David Cohen and I would love is to continue many of the stories we worked out in advance. All science-fiction epics have an underlying theme, which is ''things are not what they seem to be,'' and that was certainly the case with ''Futurama.'' David and I worked for a couple of years [planning the show] before we even pitched it, and we haven't revealed all of the secrets that are embedded in it. There are even characters that we created back in the beginning of the series that we never got around to introducing. It looks like a goofy cartoon, but the underlying science-fiction ideas are pretty good.

The episode ''Bender Does Not Belong on Television'' (where Bender ends up on the robot soap ''All My Circuits'') really eviscerates TV execs. Was this targeted at the Fox suits who buried ''Futurama'' at 7pm?
It was frustrating to have a show on Fox at 7 on Sunday night when Fox's slogan was ''The fun begins at 8!'' I got the feeling that they didn't even realize we were on the schedule. We had the guillotine hanging over our heads from before the show went on the air, so we were always happy that we got to do any episodes at all. The executives never understood the show and I was not able to explain it to them to their satisfaction.

What was their problem with it? It seemed like if Fox had aired it after ''The Simpsons,'' it would have had a much better chance of being a hit.
I think they were annoyed because they wanted to give the shows notes like they do with all their other shows -- except ''The Simpsons'' -- and we wouldn't take them. We tried to, but the notes were contradictory and ill-informed, so after trying to appease the execs, we just decided to make the show we wanted to make. And I'm proud of it. I'm as proud of ''Futurama'' as I am of ''The Simpsons.''

Would you ever do another show for Fox?
Sure! I've got lots of ideas for shows. Or anyone else who wants them! It's not easy selling a show [LAUGHS].

Like ''The Simpsons'' DVDs, ''Futurama''s have commentaries for every episode. How do the sessions for the two shows differ?
''The Simpsons'' commentaries are mostly done by the writers, and a few of the actors sit in. But on ''Futurama,'' we have Billy West (Fry), John DiMaggio (Bender), Maurice LaMarche (Kif), Tress MacNeille (Mom), and all the other voice actors sitting in. They're peppy and outgoing, whereas writers tend to be laconic and depressed, so the ''Futurama'' DVD commentaries are like attending a very wild party.

''The Simpsons'' is still going on strong, now entering its 16th season. How long will it keep going?
We're gonna do at least two more years, and maybe two more after that. It's hard for me to imagine the show ever ending. The goal with ''The Simpsons'' is to continue to surprise ourselves, and so far, that's happening. I don't see any reason for it to end.

So I guess you don't agree with Harry Shearer, who recently complained that the show hasn't been funny since Season 4.
I think that's just God's way of punishing us for taking the lord Jeebus' name in vain [LAUGHS]. Back in Season 4, which he liked, that's when we stopped our mandatory group hug at every table read. Maybe we'll have to bring that back.

For A Review of Futurama go to http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/futurama.htm