The animated sci fi comedy series Futurama is returning for an eighth season that will stream on Hulu. The streamer made the announcement today that twenty new episodes are in the works which will be released in two batches. Creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen will be returning as will most of the original voice cast. John DiMaggio will not be returning as the voice of Bender, though, and that role will be recast. The show originally ran on FOX before getting cancelled midway through its fourth season in 2003. It later came back as several direct-to-DVD home video releases and was then picked up by Comedy Central where it continued through a seventh season. The upcoming eighth season will likely premiere on Hulu in late 2022 or early 2023.
Producers Uri Singer and Aimee Peyronnet have acquired the rights to Pierre Boulle’s script The Planet of Men which was originally intended as a sequel to 1968’s The Planet of the Apes. Boulle wrote the novel that the movie was based on and was asked to write a sequel to the movie. His script followed Taylor (played by Charlton Heston in the original film) who teaches the humans to speak and to rebel against the apes. The original Apes franchise went a different direction with the sequel film Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Boulle’s script was mostly forgotten. But now that Singer and Peyronnet have the rights to the story, they are working on adapting it as a television series. This is very early in the development stage and no network is attached at this point.
In additional development news, Anna Fishko (The Society) has come onboard as writer and executive producer for the previously announced Orphan Black prequel series that is in the works at AMC. Details on the spin-off from the cult favorite show are sparse at this point as it is currently very early in the development stage.
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