Good news, everyone: Even though Futurama has been killed off and resurrected more times than Jason Voorhees, now it’s back for season 12. And while two more 10-episode seasons have already been given the go-ahead, one can’t help but wonder: where will the show go from there? Will it get canceled yet again, then brought back at some future date, possibly when the cast members are all just heads in jars?
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Seeing as the show has sustained a loyal fan base for the past quarter century, why not make the next logical step by bringing Futurama to the big screen? Surely multiplexes all over the world would be packed full of Futurama fans and/or connoisseurs of jerks who pick fights in movie theaters.
Well, the makers of the show have been thinking the same thing. As executive producers David X. Cohen and Claudia Katz recently revealed to ComicBook.com during Comic-Con, they have actively “lobbied” for a Futurama movie, and believe that the show is “really, really well suited to features.”
Sure, there were four straight-to-DVD Futurama “movies” in the past, beginning with Bender’s Big Score, but those don’t exactly count. “That was a great complicated process because each one had to be constructed to also decompose into four TV episodes,” Cohen admitted, referring to a past deal that necessitated dividing each movie into individual episodes to later air on Comedy Central.
Plus, Futurama would work really well on a big screen, arguably to a greater degree than Matt Groening’s other long-running cartoon, which already received a movie adaptation in 2007, despite taking place in the boring old 21st century. “I think maybe even more than The Simpsons, it’s just more conducive to a super exciting feature,” Katz argued, pointing out that when they’ve screened episodes in movie theaters for the cast and crew, it looks “fantastic.”
This isn’t the first time that producers have floated the idea of a Futurama movie. Back in 2009, Cohen and Groening told IGN that they were actively trying to get a movie made, again arguing that “Futurama would lend itself perfectly to a movie, even more so than The Simpsons.” Groening also divulged that he’d been toying with the idea of spearheading a live-action Futurama movie. “The one thing we can’t figure out is how to do Leela with one eye in live action,” Groening admitted.
“It would be very disturbing,” Cohen agreed. Judging from the 2016 live-action Futurama fan film, Fan-O-Rama, they were right! It is indeed disturbing!
Getting a Futurama movie into theaters might be something of an uphill battle, considering that the most recent example of a movie based on a beloved adult animated series, The Bob’s Burgers Movie, didn’t do so well at the box office. In fact, it straight-up flopped, despite being quite good.
But owing to its sci-fi premise, a theatrical Futurama feature might make its case to audiences better than Bob’s Burgers, which, due to its grounded nature, was likely a harder sell, especially after multiple pandemic-related delays. Some Futurama episodes already feel appropriately cinematic.
If they ever do make a movie, rest assured that Futurama fans will undoubtedly respond by posting memes instructing everybody to shut up and take their money.
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