SDCC 2024: Futurama Executive Producers Tease New Movie Aspirations

Futurama is currently getting ready to return for Season 12 of the series on Hulu, and the executive producers behind it all teased their aspirations for a new movie! Futurama is a rare animated franchise in that it’s returned from cancellation not once, but twice before it returned with new episodes on Hulu. The first revival for the franchise came in the form of direct to DVD films that were later adapted into episodes fit for a TV broadcast when Futurama was then picked up once more with Comedy Central. So it’s not like the team behind Futurama isn’t familiar with feature length projects. 

Speaking with ComicBook during the San Diego Comic-Con 2024 weekend, Futurama executive producers David X. Cohen and Claudia Katz were asked about whether or not Futurama could ever see a full feature film release given its success with Hulu thus far. As it turns out, it’s something the two of them would be “super excited about” and have even lobbied for in the past as they have always thought that Futurama would make for a great theatrical release.

New Futurama Movie? 

“That’s something I know, I don’t want to speak for David, but I think Futurama is really, really well suited to features and so that’s something we’d be super excited about,” Claudia Katz stated. David X. Cohen then followed with the fact they’ve done direct to video movies in the past, “Yeah, we’ve lobbied for it many times. We did four of these direct-to-DVD sort of movies, but that was a great complicated process because each one had to be constructed to also decompose into four TV episodes…it was a really big process.” 

Cohen then continued, “We’ve always thought it would make a great feature theatrical movie. And I will say internally, occasionally we’ve gotten together and watched episodes just cast and crew on in a movie theater…It looks so fantastic, even just what these guys are doing for TV. That yeah, I think it would be great. And then, I don’t know, [Matt Groening] talks about it too, and he has some fantastical visual ideas if we were to ever do it, but I’ll let him speak to that.”

Katz then spoke about how Futurama‘s sci-fi premise would just make it more conducive to an exciting movie, “I think also we have such great characters, such great writing and the sci-fi that the show really, I think maybe even more than The Simpsons, it’s just more conducive to a super exciting feature. So I hope we get to do that eventually.” With Cohen then revealing that they sort of write the show with 23 minute movies in mind, “When we’re writing it, I mean honestly, we approach each episode as a movie basically. It’s like we’re going to do a sci-fi movie [in] 22 minutes. But that’s sort of how we think of it. And what you would want to see in the movie about this sci-fi topic.”