Remember that news with Comedy Central ordering 26 new episodes of Futurama from Fox and how awesome that sounded? Well Fox is now circulating a casting call to replace the voice actors. John DiMaggio (Bender) brought this to light on his Facebook page, then non-Futurama voice actors chimed in that they’d been offered auditions, the casting call became public and it all means Fox is at least pretending to want to recast the show. Assuming the best, they’re strong-arming the current cast into accepting lower fees, which seems ridiculous given they’re a huge reason the show has been successful and it’s coming off strong syndication and movie sales.
Fox was involved in a similar debacle back in 1998 with the cast of The Simpsons, which wanted a raise after the show had become a huge hit. Fox then threatened and even prepared to recast, but it was eventually resolved. Wikipedia says the resolution ended with the main cast getting around 400% raises, so I’m not quite sure this strategy works that well for them, especially when it’s public and the fanbase gets involved. Does anyone really want a Futurama without the likes of John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal, Maurice LaMarche, etc. voicing our favorite characters? I don’t think so.
The whole thing gets weirder since the aforementioned actors and creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen are all doing a Futurama panel at Comic Con next Saturday. I suppose there’s some small chance this is all a poorly conceived promotional stunt, but who knows.
You can see the casting call over at Forces of Geek. They’ve also got the email to the casting director. Do with that what you feel proper…
I have a hard time believing the actors are being unreasonable given that the show has an on-again-off-again history, so hopefully they win the day one way or another. Recasting the show would leave me unwilling to watch. I have an equally hard time believing that Comedy Central would want a recast show as well.
Do the right thing for once Fox, please?
