Our fan art submitter Alexander 'Scary Movie' Gustafsson, who is known to submit scary futurama related pictures sent in another halloween'ish picture today. Check out his Fan Art Gallery. Shadowstar submitted his Episode 9 episode guide.

One year ago, on Halloween, CGEF got resurrected from the dead. And now we are going strong and celebrating yet again our first anniversary. In that year many things happened, like the cancellation of Futurama or Futurama finally winning its deserved Emmy. I hope CGEF has another fruitful year and that Futurama can live forever in our hearts and hopefully still on TV Besides this all, have a scary Halloween you all...

Shadowstar sent us his latest reworked Futurama guides in his own unique style. These two are for "When Aliens Attack" and "Fry and the Slurm Factory" - both now on his page at CGEF.

Speaking of which, Otis P Jivefunk mailed 2 more fan arts, too which warrants shifting him from "various submitters" to his own page.

Keep submitting your work!

The Futurama Season 5 Premiere on November the 10th will be the episode "Crimes of the Hot" according to TVGuide. The time seems to be 7pm/6c again, which will open it up for ample football pre-emption and "already in progress" showing where applicable (Washington, Cincinnati, Houston, etc).

Now to the episode:
FOX seems to have chosen to take a "mid production-season 4 episode" (4ACV08) as the premiere because it features a guest star: Al Gore - voiced by himself.

As Earth is unable to counter its rising temperature through the usual method (the dropping of a giant ice cube into the ocean), Gore leads an emergency conference in Kyoto, Japan, where Professor Farnsworth claims responsibility for the crisis. It seems love detoured him from observing proper emission standards on his prototype robot, and that could necessitate the destruction of all its "descendants." That includes Bender, who resigns himself to having a farewell blowout before being blown up.

It should be fun to see how the Futurama staff managed to integrate both Al Gore and Kyoto into an episode when his political opponent tried to rip the protocoll apart. It's a bit of a shame though that we'll be in the 5th season and still didn't see all episodes produced for season 3.

Finally, I got to do the sounds & quotes for Cryonic Woman - which means we completed Season 3 regarding these.

Zoidberg: "Good bye friends! I'll miss you ... Good riddance to them. Now Zoidberg is the popular one!"
Farnsworth: "Yes, yes. Let's all talk to Zoidberg."
(download 89kb)

Futurama producer and writer Patric Verrone was honored with the Animation Writing Award by the Animation Writers Caucus of the Writers Guild of America.

"Patric's talents as a writer are matched by his passion for the craft and for the years he has poured his time and energy into advancing the status and rights of animation writers"
-- Victoria Riskin, pres. of WGA

The award is targeted at the person of Patric himself and shows how much his work (and that's Futurama to a big extend in the last years) is valued by people in the business who do have a clue:

"His work in daytime and primetime animation, in particular his writing for Futurama, have always been of the highest quality."
-- Craig Miller, AWC chair

Congrats from our side, too!

"Woohoo! just received this email from TFAW!" was what I got mailed by Sebastien two days ago. What he was so happy about? He got a notice by email telling him that 'Things From Another World' is shipping the Slurm Can + Playing Cards - for $5.99 instead of 9-something!
While it does not include real slurm (d'oh), the can is nicely done and the playing card set comes as a welcome bonus. Read Jon's detailed review and then go and order the can & cards! This thing is hard to find anywhere else.

I turned a PEEL thread into a permanent game for CGEF: Dub The Frame! The objective is to write up a short dialog or quote for a framegrab. Try to be funny We'll start with Amy sitting on a guy in a cast and exchange the framegrab used roughly every week.

I got some more of Erdriks fanart, it's 4 new pictures. By this I also want to tell you to submit to submit@gotfuturama.com and not our personal adresses, this way it's easier for us to process them and speed things up.

Shannon Muir - herself a production coordinator for Nickelodeon's Invader Zim - interviewed Futurama Supervising Producer Patric Verrone on in-biz topics like prime time animation, its difference to other animation, becoming a writer and his view on unions in the business (Patric is the Secretary-Treasurer for the Western WGA):

"You need to be willing and able to sit in a conference room for twelve hour days, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, rewriting scripts line by line. It also helps if you can direct actors, edit, design, compose music and lyrics, and brew beer. On FUTURAMA, everyone had to be able to do at least a majority of those things"

Read the rest in Shannon's column at DigitalMediaFX.

Mediaweek reports that Cartoon Network will expand their Adult Swim block to 5 nights a week starting Sunday, January 12th. Speculation was around a bit earlier already but it looks final now.
The new timeslots will be Sunday through Thursday from 11pm to 1am with Futurama as the opener at 11pm from Monday through Thursday.
This gives us 4 episodes a week (plus maybe - just maybe - one on Sunday on FOX ).

Interesting for the UK: Sky/NTL Digital channel CNX recently added 5 Adult Swim programs to their lineup. Hope for Futurama in the future. In the meantime, watch Futurama at 10:25am on C4 this week.

Thanks go to Corey for the leads.

On my daily journey through Futurama content on the web, I recently came across a poorly done russian CGEF rip-off and I saw another one in German once, too. This made me think some. Why not have more talented people use some of our content instead of people taking our layout?

So, here we go: From now on we'll be serving our news headlines with a brief excerpt through the means of RSS 0.91 at www.gotfuturama.com/Includes/CGEF091.rss. If you got a PHP-nuke or Post-nuke website, you can easily include our headlines on your site and I think some blog systems allow syndicating RSS, too. Or just parse the XML inside the RSS-file (see a simple code sample in Perl).
If you use this feed, please try to fetch it no more than once an hour and send me a short eMail so I can see if things are working correctly.

Examples of CGEF News integrated into website designs (using a custom feed) can be seen at the Futurama Message Board PEEL or the light-weight CGEF version I set up at DOOP.org.

Like announced last week, there will be no Futurama on FOX this week because FOX is showing NFL and Baseball.

Next week FOX will be showing "The Simpsons" at 7:00pm instead of Futurama as they want to show either "Die Hard" or Baseball starting at 7:30pm.
The week after, "Bendin' in the Wind" might air in the West while the East gets some more NFL juice.

Let's hope that the Futurama Season 5 (read: season 4 redux) Premiere on November 10th will not again get "in progress" or "not at all" treatment like the Season 4 got in parts of the East.

Looks like the German TV channel Pro7 will replace Family Guy (I'm a fan, sort of, but the German dub is at least as awful as the Futurama one) with Futurama starting mid November. The Season 4 episodes will air on Saturdays at 18:00 - not exactly the late evening time slot fans had been hoping for in Germany.

Well the title says it all, I got the guides from Episode 10 and 11 from shadowstar. They're in the fanart section. Check 'em out. I also got 3 new fan art pictures from Erdrik

Like announced last week, the Futurama-o-Rama comic collection book is now available at about $10 (20% off). It contains the first 4 Futurama Comics in a paperback version.

Also, I hear that the Futurama Season 2 DVDs are available in Spain (thanks lupo). The discs are identical to the German ones but for the labels/box.
3 more weeks and we all got them! Keep preordering them from amazon.co.uk or amazon.de to help us keeping this site pop-up free!

Let's have a look at what Futurama will run up against.

• NBC: The show 'Dateline' will be put on hiatus next Sunday and be succeeded by reruns of 'American Dreams'
• WB: Nothing new here - reruns of The Gilmore Girls
• ABC: Assorted movies depending on your local affiliate.
• CBS: Football up to December which is likely to run into the 7pm timeslot. Otherwise the strong going '60 minutes'.
• FOX: Football up to December which is likely to run into the 7pm timeslot.

With The Wonderyears rip-off 'Oliver Beene' being held back till January 26th FOX might decide to give the 7:30 timeslot to Futurama which would shield it some from the Football overruns. Or they just air some 'The world's most xxx yyy'.
'60 minutes' will be the big guy of the 7 to 8pm timeslot just like last year but the reruns on WB and NBC might give Futurama some air to breath.

Some of you might have read the Channel 4 Teletext article about 3 months back in which Mat Groening said:

"It's not over. We are trying to keep it alive with movies, cartoons, video games, toys and comic books"

and

"if it's not Futurama, we are going to work on another project. I have a couple of series in the works and TV shows I want to do."

I recently also got similar words by David X Cohen:

"It [Cartoon Network syndication] increases the chances that we can at least keep doing video games, comics, etc... maybe even a movie someday"So, I was wondering what you think about the prospect of a possible episode-free season with toys, games and maybe a movie instead.

I know that both - understandably - are some sensitive about this issue. In my view any Futurama is better than no Futurama, but what's your comment?

This is going to be a simple news entry: Futurama on TV over the next weeks:

Today: No Futurama
Next week: No Futurama
Week after: No Futurama

There, done.

Farnsworth: "The circuit diagram is right in the inside of your case"
Robot: "I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe"
(download 54kb)

The sounds of The Honking are finally up, check them out.

Here is some more possible Futurama Halloween stuff for you (partly already published here before):

selfmade Bender on ComicCon 2001

Bender Halloween mask in action

Leela on Baycon 99

Leela & Bender on ComicCon

Anyone out to make Futurama costumes?

Firstly, all available Futurama Stuff at eMerchandise is still 15% off for a reason I don't know.

Then ... 'Things from another Planet' has 10% off on preorders for the Futurama/Simpsons Crossover Comic #2. Usually these offers only last for a few days (reserves).

And ... don't forget to order your Bender Halloween Mask for only $5.99, also at TFAW!

Our Futurama petition crossed the 150,000 signature mark yesterday. Even when deducting 20% fakes/doublets, we still have one hell of an impressive number here.

While it is unlikely that FOX will change its mind on the ground of the petition alone, it does give Groening and Cohen something big to point at during negotiations. Both refered to it multiple times during interviews.

Look what I found on the FOXy UK server: The Trailer to the Futurama Season 2 DVD set. They don't have their info on the Futurama DVDs up yet, but finding the trailer was easy enough guess-work.

The second Futurama DVDs are released on November 11th for region 2 (Europe). They can be preordered at 20% off (£32) at amazon in the UK or for €50 at amazon in Germany. All 19 2ACV episodes and lots of extras are packed on the 4 DVDs.

Now preorder. I said dooooo it!

For a change, it's not me
Peter Davids - author of several Star Trek novels, comic books and Babylon 5 scripts - has a little rant about FOX's treatment of science fiction shows. Read his 10/07 entry called FireFox.

Then there's "Futurama," a show pre-empted so routinely that there's enough unshown episodes stockpiled for an entire season...most of which will likely be pre-empted if history is any judge.

What good is trying (in regards to SciFi during prime time) when there is no commitment to back it up later on?

Thanks to PEEL moderator Kryten for pointing to this article.

Back to being a geek.
Last Sunday's Time keeps on slipping' has been added to the list of episodes with available Futurama Capsules. Read and submit!

Don

Here is the first image of the upcoming Futurama-O-Rama by Harperperennial Library. It is scheduled to ship on October 15th and will consist out fo the first 4 comics in a hardcover. Current pre-order price at amazon is $10.36 (20% off). There also is a UK version which is published by Titan Books.

Sorry for the long delay for the new Episode Guides made by shadowstar. Well here they are.

Xmoo.com is going to auction another futurama comic soon (only for newbies) so it might be fun for you to join up for the game and try to get that comic.