Futurama‘s Producers Reveal How They Keep Track of 25 Years of Sci-Fi Lore

Futurama returns to its caller location connected Hulu Monday, July 29, with a 10-episode play that will delight fans some aged and new. There are two much seasons connected the way, with hopefully much to follow—and the formed and unit was astatine San Diego Comic-Con to observe the amusement that keeps getting canceled and past uncovering its mode back.

Executive producers David X. Cohen and Claudia Katz—who agreed they’d love to bash an existent big-screen Futurama diagnostic movie 1 day—spoke to a SDCC property roundtable astir the amusement up of its play 12 premiere. io9 got a accidental to inquire a question we’ve often wondered: Futurama has been around, connected and disconnected the air, for 25 years. Is determination idiosyncratic among the seasoned unit who’s benignant of designated arsenic the keeper of the lore, to marque definite each the continuity lines up?

“It depends connected which facet you’re looking at,” Cohen said. “Because [animation studio] Rough Draft has each the creation going backmost forever. And similar each 10 years erstwhile we get renewed, they person to redraw everything astatine a higher solution due to the fact that the TV has much scan lines [laughs].”

Katz chimed in. “We person present reanimated our rubric series successful 3D, I deliberation 3 times; this past clip was successful 4K, and they had to redo everything. It’s comic due to the fact that I was showing it to David and we were seeing things that we’d ne'er noticed before, due to the fact that it was successful 4K. We were like, ‘What is that? Did you enactment that successful there?’ ‘No, that’s ever been there.’ ‘Oh, cool,'” she said.

Cohen continued. “One of the different things I volition accidental that allows the amusement to travel backmost again and again is there’s been a batch of continuity down the scenes. Many of the aforesaid animators and producers astatine Rough Draft Studios, for example, our full dependable formed has stayed with the amusement throughout, which has been ace captious and a small spot fortunate statistically, probably. And then, adjacent the writers, adjacent now, the penning unit is astatine slightest fractional writers [who] person been determination connected and disconnected for 20-plus years, and [we also] person newer radical who came to the amusement arsenic fans.”

Added Katz, “And it’s the aforesaid connected the creation side—like you person your benignant of stalwarts and past your benignant of caller [talent].”

Cohen past had a concealed to stock astir however the show’s writers negociate to support each that Futurama lore straight. “The embarrassing admittance that I’m astir to marque is that successful the writers room, we are often consulting these instrumentality sites to spot what happened successful the aged episodes. Even those of america who wrote the episodes. I’ve been to, like, instrumentality Futurama trivia night, for example, and came successful second. It’s hard to vie with fans for the repository of knowledge.”

And, of course, “Sometimes, we conscionable hide worldly too. Like, there’s an animation error—you don’t privation to blasted the animators due to the fact that everybody forgot,” helium said. “The writers didn’t accidental thing astir it. But Leela’s dad, his rima utilized to unfastened broadside to broadside but present it opens [up and down]. But past it’s going to spell backmost to [the archetypal way]. The happening is, he’s got precise flexible jaws! So successful immoderate sense, immoderate things bash autumn done the cracks of time.”

Futurama play 12 kicks disconnected July 29 connected Hulu.

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