It’s been 10 years since Futurama went off the air a second time. The third iteration of Matt Groening’s beloved sci-fi cartoon — fourth if you count those movie specials released before the Comedy Central revival — kicks off on July 24, with new episodes hitting Hulu every week. But how long will this run go for? It’s semi-complicated.
What’s either the eighth or the eleventh season of the show, depending on how you count them, will make like the final seasons of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad: They’ll be divided into two. The first batch runs 10 episodes, all the way into September 25. Don’t worry, there’s 10 more en route, though it’s not yet known when they’ll begin dropping.
This latest resurrection didn’t happen too easily. Disney was able to get almost the original cast to return, save one major exception (though they’re all major, to be honest). John DiMaggio, who voices alcoholic robot Bender — as well as sadistic Robot Santa and other characters — held out because the super-corporation didn’t want to pay him what he wanted. DiMaggio didn’t get that pay raise, but he did get something else: “respect,” he boasted last year shortly after he signed on again.
Futurama was famously axed on Fox, its original network, back in 2003. After fans turned it into a bona fide cult item, a quartet of movies, alter divided into episodes, followed in 2008. In 2010, Comedy Central brought it back again, in a run that lasted till 2013. And now look at them.
