Entertainment Weekly reports that the second flight of the Planet Express has come to an end with the second half of "Futurama's" season seven.
The fan-heavy and ratings-challenged series may have gotten a second life thanks to DVD and Blu-ray sales from its FOX run, but it looks like people simply weren't gravitating towards the new run in the same way. After a going dark following a wonderful four season run on FOX, the show came back through a series of solid to not great direct-to-DVD feature films before returning for a fifth season on Comedy Central where the series started to find its way again, delivering some very good episodes along the way.
It's weird, though--I'm not sure what kind of licensing agreements the network had, but if I missed an episode of the Comedy Central run of "Futurama," it wasn't available via Hulu or my cable On Demand service, meaning that if I missed one, I was simply out of luck until the reruns (or DVD release).
If you listen to the commentaries on the season 5 DVD, the show's creators (including executive producer David X. Cohen) were always ready for the show to be canceled: both seasons five and six were written with series finales in place just in case. He told EW “It was what I had expected two years earlier. At this point I keep a suitcase by my office door so I can be cancelled at a moment’s notice.”
The series producers are, of course, exploring options for a new home for the series, but haven't arrived at any serious answers. I think we're all kind of hoping Cartoon Network might step up here, but I suspect with all of the performers' salaries and the quality of the show's production, it might be a more expensive show for that network than their normal programming.
This comes on the heels of the rumors that "The Cleveland Show" is likewise getting the axe at FOX, but this stings a bit more since "Futurama" is a show I liked.
The final half of season seven will begin September 4.
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