The animated comedy “Futurama” returns shortly for its latest revival, this time on Hulu, where the series will now have plenty of material from news headlines of the past few years to mine for laughs.
The original cast returns for ten all-new episodes that aim to embrace new viewers and pay off some decades-long mysteries, from Fry and Leela’s romance to evil Robot Santa’s back history and more.
The release marks the first half of a twenty-episode order by Hulu for more of the series created by Matt Groening and the first new episodes from the franchise in a decade.
Speaking with SFX Magazine (via Slashfilm), executive producer Claudia Katz discusses how the 31st century-set show will deal with some very 21st century real life issues:
“We have a vaccine episode. We’ve finally conquered COVID-19 in 3023, so that’s a very fun exploration of the science, vaccines and just a commentary on that whole situation.
There’s a fun Bitcoin episode. And we have an NFT episode which, of course, no one understands, which is sort of the joke. And one of my favourite episodes of the season involves one of our cast members being cancelled for their behaviour, so that’s pretty fantastic.”
Said cast member is lecherous starship captain Zapp Branigan in the appropriately titled episode “Zapp Gets Canceled,” which airs September 11th. The new run of “Futurama” premieres July 24th and runs through September 25th on Hulu.
