New "Arrested Development" Season Coming Exclusively to Netflix!

Remember when we told you the most exciting news of 2011?  No, not the Wii U.  The news that, after five years being cancelled, the incredible Emmy-award-winning comedy Arrested Development was getting one final season and a movie!  Today, they've finally pulled back the curtain on the new season and, well, it seems the Bluths won't be hitting the airwaves, but rather your computer screens in the first half of 2013.

20th Century Fox just inked a deal with Netflix (oh, you know the one) to produce the new episodes exclusively for the US subscribers of Netflix Instant.  Oh, 2013 can't come fast enough.

This marks the second serious push toward producing original content by Netflix, with Arrested Development complementing a David Fincher political thriller House of Cards, announced earlier this year.  Also of note, Arrested Development marks the third Fox property to be revived from cancellation, with Family Guy and Futurama being the pioneers in that rise from the grave.

And with the resounding success that Fox has seen with these revived shows, is it perhaps worth revisiting other loved, but ill-fated properties to continue this trek to the digital distribution reboot?  Netflix sure could use the positive PR these days, and what could be better PR than keeping the world's army of nerds squeeing with joy?  And with the increasing number of Netflix-enabled TVs, game consoles, tablets, cell phones, computers, and set-top boxes, there's a wide audience ready to subscribe for something that has content worth the monthly fee.

I say we start with Firefly.

Futurama Renewed for Seventh Season!

Good news, everyone!* Our look into the year 3000 shall continue: Comedy Central has renewed the award-winning Futurama for a 26-episode, seventh season!

After the quick-witted, animated comedy was unceremoniously canceled by Fox (as the greatest shows often are), Comedy Central revived Futurama in 2008 in the form of four direct-to-DVD movies, constituting the series' fifth season. Last year, Futurama was renewed for a standard-format sixth season, which lead to network's highest rated Thursday night in Comedy Central's history. It's no wonder why the comedy network is so keen to stay friendly with series' creators, Matt Groening and David X. Cohen.

The second half of season six is slated for this summer, with the first 13 episodes of season seven airing in 2012 and the latter half in 2013.

*Bloggers and journalists are contractually obligated to start every Futurama renewal post with this phrase.

Another Look Into the Year 3000!

New Episodes on Comedy Central

www.comedycentral.com

Good news, everyone!

Awesomeness wins again.  Futurama, one of Fox's many incredible-yet-cancelled shows, has been revived.  New episodes are set to start playing this June on Comedy Central.

Created by Matt Groening (Simpsons) and David X. Cohen, Futurama, set in the year 3000, follows the misadventures and hijinks of Philip J. Fry, a bumbling loser who found himself 1000 years in future after an accidental cryogenic freezing during Y2K, and his coworkers, a veritable bevy of hilarious characters and lovable scamps.

The Emmy-Award-winning show is the second of Fox's cancelled animated shows that beat the near-insurmountable odds to un-cancellation.  Family Guy, spurred by DVD sales, was the first animated show to beat the eviction notice, but Futurama's phoenix rise was brought mainly by the hand of the people at Comedy Central.

After a short, but successful stint on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, Comedy Central acquired the syndication rights to Futurama's first four seasons, which saw even more ratings success.  After launching the four straight-to-DVD movies (which each were split into four episodes and is now labeled the fifth season), the comedy network wanted more.

Last June, Fox and Comedy Central nailed down the deal to produce up to 26 new episodes of a brand new sixth season of Futurama, and the result of that deal is finally coming to fruition.

I can't put into words how excited I am.  I love this show.  I mean, any show that can put the sentence

Look, this is going to be one hell of a bowel movement.  He'll be lucky if he has any bones left.

in a story and have it make sense to the plot is a-ok in my book.  Plus, the amount of math nerd jokes in there fills the quota in such a way that I can't help but smile.