The Orville's Future Reportedly Uncertain After Season 3
The future of The Orville is looking uncertain. The upcoming third season of Seth MacFarlane's homage to classic Star Trek debuts on June 2nd, with a new title, The Orville: New Horizons, and a new home on the Hulu streaming service, having jumped from Fox. But Deadline reports that there are currently no plans to continue the series with a fourth season and that the show's cast was released from their contracts in August after their most recent options expired. The news comes as MacFarlane, who also stars in The Orville, is shifting his focus towards his new deal with NBCUniversal to produce content for Peacock, including a television series based on his comedy film Ted. The series reunited MacFarlane, who voices the title character, with his The Orville co-star, Scott Grimes.
However, the reports note that The Orville: New Horizons is not meant to end the show definitively. Instead, the door will remain open for MacFarlane to revisit The Orville in the future, though doing so would mean reassembling the cast, who will likely be taking on new projects.
McFarlane announced The Orville's movie to Hulu in 2020. His statement indicated the move was based on the need for more resources to fuel the sci-fi series into the future. "The Orville has been a labor of love for me, and there are two companies which have supported that vision in a big way: 20th Century Fox Television, where I've had a deal since the start of my career, and FOX Broadcasting Company, now FOX Entertainment, which has been my broadcast home for over 20 years. My friends at the network understood what I was trying to do with this series, and they've done a spectacular job of marketing, launching and programming it for these past two seasons. But as the show has evolved and become more ambitious production-wise, I determined that I would not be able to deliver episodes until 2020, which would be challenging for the network."
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the show for years at this point, though McFarlane previously assured fans that he'd never stopped working on getting The Orville back to television. "All I can say is we're working on it," MacFarlane said. "We're working very hard. We got hit by this just like everyone else, but we are working on it. We will be back soon, folks. There has been a lot of speculation online: Will the show come back? The show is still a huge priority for me and for the cast and everyone else. We do have a season to finish, and we are going to finish it. For a show with a lot of prosthetic makeup that requires close contact, a lot of background artists, it's a big job, and you want to make sure you do it in a way that keeps everyone safe and secure. Once we have those protocols figured out, we will start up again and you will get more Orville."
The Orville: New Horizons debuts on Hulu on June 2nd. The Orville's first two seasons are streaming now.