Futurama: John DiMaggio Drops Salary Bombshell About His Return as Bender

Futurama is currently in the works on a new revival series for Hulu, but John DiMaggio noted that he did not receive any more money during the contract negotiations with the team before signing onto the revival. When the new episodes of the famous animated series were first revealed to be in the works, it was confirmed that much of the original voice cast had signed on for the new revival series. DiMaggio was notably holding off on signing onto the new show citing pay concerns about the upcoming project before eventually signing onto the revival series sometime after.

Upon seeing DiMaggio sign onto the new Futurama series, many fans had suspected that he was able to negotiate a higher rate of pay for his work with the new episodes. But as he noted during a panel at Phoenix Fan Fusion (as reported by /Film), this might not have been the case after all as DiMaggio stated that the reality of the situation is much different, “People are like, ‘I’m so glad you got more money!’” DiMaggio noted. He then added, “I didn’t get more money. But what I did get was a lot of respect, and a lot of head nods from people who are like, ‘Yo bro, I see you and thank you.’”

DiMaggio explained that Hulu’s original plan to move ahead without him as part of the cast would have led them to using guest stars to replace the voice of Bender each episode. While DiMaggio had noted that the respect he got from his colleagues “quite rewarding,” the negotiations themselves were tough, “trying to get money out of Disney is like trying to get blood from a stone – you ain’t gonna get it.” As he elaborated further, it seemed like a tough decision to come to. 

Speaking about the situation as a whole, DiMaggio offered the following, “But listen, this was the best thing about that fight: I had Disney, Hulu, I was holding on to their collective testicles so hard that they couldn’t, y’know, there was nowhere for them to go. But there was also nowhere for me to go, and who wants to hold on to those for that long?” 

As for new Futurama, 20 new episodes are currently in the works for a release on Hulu next year. What do you think? How do you feel about John DiMaggio returning for the new episodes of Futurama along with the rest of the original cast? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!

via /Film