That's more like it...

All the Sturm and Drang is over, and the Futrama Crisis of '09 that I was only recently made aware of is over! Fox and the voice actors have worked out their contract dispute, and Futurama's revival will go forward with the One True Cast. Frankly, I think Fox "acted stupidly" by even taking their game of chicken that far. If the execs knew what made Futurama popular, and therefore, a financial success by any measure, they would known that having the original actors is critical to any revival. I can understand not wanting to give the farm away, the actors on the Simpsons have managed up re-up to some pretty nice per-show rates, and I'm sure Futurama's budget isn't going to be anywhere near the current Simpsons budget. Still, if Fox had followed through and used new actors for the show, many, MANY of the existing fans would have not watched, other than perhaps a brief peek at an episode or two before turning away in disgust. The reason the DVD movies made money is because Futurama has a big following, somewhere between a large cult following and a moderate mainstream following. And the time and money were taken to make sure the movies were made right. My only complaint about them is that having to structure them in such as way as to be ready to be parsed into individual episodes for repeats on Comedy Central made some of them a little awkward. In any event, if Fox was were willing to let the X-Files run into the ground just to keep a marginal cult audience, they should have been more than willing to invest in the right talent to make sure the show stays true to itself and keeps existing fans as well as attracting new ones.

Now that things seem to be back on track, albeit with some unfortunate cuts to the writing and production staff, hopefully the new, somewhat slimmed-down Futurama will be as good as the original. It's up to all of us who love the esoteric humor and witty banter of Futurama to support it when it finally returns. If we're lucky, maybe this show can live on longer in its second run than it did in its first one...