TV News - Futurama is back! David X. Cohen on has a chat about it...

Talking with David X. Cohen is always fun, because the 'Futurama' showrunner has the same wry, geeky manner as most of the show's fans (including me). So you can do things like goof with him about adding a 'Lost'-style twist to the season finale or how the iPhone will be implanted in your eye in the future. But what he's the most good-natured about -- and most resigned to -- is the show's perpetually precarious situation.

When I spoke to Cohen earlier this week, he mentioned the fact that he was again trying to write the 26th and last episode of Comedy Central's current order to serve as both a season or series finale. And the crew and writers were again trying to figure out their next steps.

"(I)t's familiar territory for us," he said, "but because Comedy Central's airing these half this year, half next year, it's a little less of an emergency for them to make any decision if they want to order more or not. So we're very used to it, unfortunately."
Otherwise, he happily gave us a preview of what will happen during the first half of the run, which begins on June 24 at 10PM ET with a double shot of episodes. He also envisioned what a 'Futurama' feature film might look like. Interview and clips after the jump (Warning: We do talk a little about the 'Lost' finale. So if you haven't seen it, read that part at your own risk).

Do you wish sometimes that things were like more straightforward, like your cousins over at 'The Simpsons' are, where it's "season 21, season 22, here we go," you know?
Yeah. Yeah, well it's a blessing and a curse, I guess, because you work at 'The Simpsons' and you don't jump ship at some point, suddenly you're 20 years older. (chuckles) So there's something to be said for a little drama of periodic cancellation and resuscitation to liven your experiences up a little bit.

When you did that last movie to kind of land it on a cliffhanger and let people know hey, here's how it ends, whether we're back or not? What was the thought there?
Yeah, well, we're one of the few shows now that has a lot of experience writing our last episode ever, so we're currently engaged in doing that for the 3rd time, at the moment, in fact. So our goal, I've decided, in the last couple of efforts at least, is to strike a tone where I would be happy if that was our last episode, right? I shouldn't say happy, I should say satisfied, I guess. Where it's kind of a bittersweet tone and on the one hand, it could be the end of the series, but on the other hand, we don't actually have a giant anti-matter explosion that kills all of our characters beyond repair. So we've learned to leave our options open, but I never want to be presumptuous and assume that we're going to come back. It just so happens we've had the good fortune so far to return, so we've cashed in on the fact that we didn't kill all our characters off in a LOST-style shootout.

Is the next ending going to be where it's all like some sort of religious parable and Fry's really the equivalent of Jesus, I think?
All Fry needs to do really is grow a beard, I guess. He's a little Jesus-y in his general build and complexion, I guess, by your standard clichèd version, so why not.

read the full and much longer article here...