{"id":909017,"date":"2026-09-28T21:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T21:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/909017\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T21:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T21:34:12","slug":"matt-groening-on-futurama-future-after-season-14-series-finale-ending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/909017\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Groening on ‘Futurama’ Future After Season 14 Series Finale Ending"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cFuturama<\/a>\u201d is over. Long live \u201cFuturama!\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAs the long-running animated series wraps its Season 14 Monday on Hulu, there are no further plans at the moment for it to return as a regular series. (However, three supersized Hulu specials are still to come).<\/p>\n

\n\tBut given how often the Matt Groening<\/a> animated comedy has wrapped \u2014 only to be rebooted again a few years later \u2014 it\u2019s hard for anyone involved, including Groening, to assume that this time it\u2019s really done. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey can put us in a coffin. They can nail the lid shut, but they can\u2019t bury us. We will rise again,\u201d Groening told Variety. \u201cI guess I\u2019m not too worried.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFuturama\u201d first premiered on Fox in 1999 but ended its run there in 2003. Comedy Central revived it in 2008 and wrapped the show up in 2013. It returned again in 2023 via Hulu.<\/p>\n

\n\tEach time the show went away, or it looked like the series was ending, the producers prepared an episode that could double as a series finale \u2014 only for the show to later come back. That\u2019s why the producers had some fun with the episodic name for the year\u2019s latest \u201cfinale.\u201d Monday\u2019s episode \u2014 the \u201cFuturama\u201d Season 14 ender \u2014 was given the title \u201cFinal Ending: The Last Conclusion.\u201d The episode is a bit of an origins\/flashback story; here\u2019s the logline: \u201cFry and his brother sneak into a PG-13 movie as kids \u2026 with shocking consequences for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yes, this could always double as a regular series finale. But don\u2019t bet on it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe thing about \u2018Is Futurama coming to an end?\u2019 Well, we\u2019ve come to an end many times before. We make a joke about it with the season finale. It\u2019s redundantly, fatalistically titled,\u201d Groening said. \u201cI think we have a whistling-past-the-graveyard attitude these days because we\u2019ve been in this situation many times before. We have lots more stories to tell. The animators and the actors and the writers all would love to do more stories and we\u2019ll see. You never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the meantime, \u201cFuturama\u201d marches on with those three specials (dubbed \u201cXXXL-Sized\u201d) first announced at this summer\u2019s San Diego Comic-Con<\/a>. Those extended episodes, which are currently in production, will kick off in 2027 with a Christmas-related installment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe people at Hulu\/Disney were saying, \u2018Hey, give us some big stories that we can promote,\u2019 and we said, \u2018Gotcha,\u2019\u201d Groening said. \u201cSo these three that are coming up are kind of epic stories, and they\u2019re promotable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe nature of these stories, in general for \u2018Futurama\u2019 and also \u2018The Simpsons,\u2019 is that each episode could be a movie,\u201d he added. \u201cI mean, we pack enough melodrama and shenanigans in every episode to stretch it out. It\u2019s just fun to tell a bigger story, but also take the time to breathe a little bit. Because one of the things that animated shows are bedeviled by is a short running time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBeyond the extended Christmas installment, Groening won\u2019t share what the other two specials are about just yet, only to note that \u201cwe\u2019ve been on the air forever, since 1999, so there\u2019s more to the overall arc of the story of the characters. Stuff that we have hinted at from the very beginning is finally paid off, and some unanswered questions for true fans will finally be answered. But I can\u2019t really be more specific. If you ask me again in a year, then I can talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut he did share more on the Christmas (or in \u201cFuturama\u201d parlance, \u201cXmas\u201d) edition: Robot Santa, the violent version of St. Nick who has made occasional visits on \u201cFuturama\u201d since Season 2, will play a role. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur version of Christmas, of course, is with Robot Santa,\u201d Groening said. \u201cWhich back in the day was very controversial, because our robot Santa thought he was Santa \u2014 but he thought everyone was naughty, so he would go around trying to kill everyone. That was not considered in the Christmas spirit. At first there was some talk about not running the shows. It was controversial. But now everybody has figured out, hey, it\u2019s all it\u2019s all in good fun!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn a recent episode of \u201cThe Making Of\u201d<\/a> podcast, exec producer David X. Cohen, who developed \u201cFuturama\u201d with Groening, noted that \u201cFinal Ending: The Last Conclusion\u201d is the sixth time the show has been written as a potential series finale and now the upcoming \u201cXXXL\u201d trilogy also means they\u2019ve been given a seventh stab at a \u201cseries finale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we were writing this season finale, from our point of view, it could have been the series finale and that is a situation that we have been in probably more than any other show in history,\u201d Cohen told the podcast. \u201cThe one that\u2019s going to be on shortly is our sixth series finale, in the sense again that at the time we wrote it might be, and we are now currently working on the seventh series finale. I feel like we\u2019ve gotten pretty good at it. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn my mind, if we go off the air, the characters are still having their adventures and interesting things are still happening,\u201d Cohen added. \u201cAnd I like to leave the audience thinking that there\u2019s beautiful things ahead for these characters, whether or not we get to see them. That\u2019s sort of the guiding philosophy for these series finales we\u2019ve written.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat happens if, after the three upcoming specials, \u201cFuturama\u201d really doesn\u2019t come back? \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t happen, we\u2019ll do something else,\u201d Groening said. \u201cI love the group of people that work on this. It\u2019s just a blast to work together. In fact, the cast of \u2018Futurama\u2019 and the animation studio and many of the writers also worked on \u2018Disenchantment,\u2019 which I did with Netflix for five seasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s why Season 14\u2019s penultimate episode, \u201cA New New York Yankee in King Elfo\u2019s Court,\u201d featured a \u201cFuturama\u201d\/\u201dDisenchantment\u201d crossover episode. Bringing together a Netflix and Hulu series wasn\u2019t easy. \u201cThat was a very nimble negotiation to have Disney and Netflix working together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFuturama\u201d stars John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr and David Herman. Groening created the series, which he developed with David X. Cohen. Groening, Cohen, Ken Keeler and Claudia Katz are EPs; the series is produced by 20th Television Animation, a part of Disney Television Studios. Animation comes from Rough Draft Studios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cFuturama\u201d is over. Long live \u201cFuturama!\u201d As the long-running animated series wraps its Season 14 Monday on Hulu,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,477358,243592,427],"class_list":["post-909017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-futurama","tag-matt-groening","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}