Interview with Matt Groening,

On the Simpson's in syndication,

Matt Groening: . . . But you know all those episodes that are running all during the day, those are cut. Those aren't the full episodes. They're not cut for content necessarily, but they're cut so they can squeeze in more commercials. My guess is they cut out some of the juicier stuff. . . .
my night job after The Simpsons is Futurama, which is coming back on Comedy Central in 2008, 16 new episodes, and we're going to be running the old episodes, as well.

Matt Groening: Well, I was frustrated when it got cancelled, but Fox, 20th Television is the one who came back and said, "Would you like to do a DVD movie?" and we said, "Let's do two" and they said, "Well, why not three?" and we said, "Well, why not four?" and they said, "Okay, four" and then that's it.

Crave Online: Are they really full movies or just three episodes together?

Matt Groening: We're writing them as movies and then we're going to chop them up, reconfigure them, write new material and try to make them work as separate episodes.

Crave Online: Can DVD versions be more extreme than the ones for air?

Matt Groening: Those are the marching orders we gave ourselves, yes, to really try to push it and do things we might not be able to do on TV. And then Comedy Central picked up the show and we went, "Okay, probably there's nothing we can think of that Comedy Central won't run" because I'm astonished at what I see on Comedy Central every day.

Crave Online: How will you turn those into episodes then?

Matt Groening: We are reconfiguring them and writing new material and narration and this that and the other so that they'll stand on their own as episodes.

Crave Online: Could it go on beyond that?

Matt Groening: I hope so. My guess now is that this is basically a season that we're in production on which is complicated because they're also DVDs, so that they'll probably wait and see how they do and then we'll get the pickup.

Crave Online: You never gave up on Futurama, did you?

Matt Groening: Well, I always felt like we were a little bit like the original Star Trek. I always thought that working with my partner, David X. Cohen, that we knew that the people who loved the show really, really loved it and they wrote petitions, they wrote letters and e-mails and it just seemed right. And also, everybody that worked on the show loved it. So when it came time when the show did come back, everybody without exception said, "I'm on board." At this point, I said, "We're thinking of gearing up the show again." They said, "I'm on board." Everybody, Katy Sagal, all the actors, John Dimaggio, Billy West. The original animation team, the original animation house, the original writers. Everybody came back. It was great.