Futurama

GeekSugar Community member ohmyzephyr sent us this photo of her and her husband dressed up as cute couple Leela and Fry from Futurama during last year's Halloween festivities. Obviously, making your own costume is worth the effort — these two look adorable!

For Futurama fans, an animated head in a jar is a part of daily life in New New York. The free Futurama Head in a Jar iPhone app lets users create their own legion of avatar-like heads with dozens of human, alien, and robot features.

Model your heads to look like they're related to Bender; or, create heads for all your friends, families, co-workers, and the regulars on your morning bus commute. The heads are placed on exhibit in your own personal Head Museum and can be shared with friends via email, Facebook, and Twitter. The images can be added as the photo for phone contacts. We'll, of course, be making our head in a jar our social network profile pictures once it's perfected.

It's that time of year again — Upfronts Week, where the networks unveil their Fall schedules to potential advertisers. More importantly, it's when I find out which sci-fi shows made it to another season, which ones bit the dust, and whether or not there's a new Lost in the makings.

While almost all my faves were renewed (Caprica! Fringe!), other shows were not as lucky. Dollhouse, FlashForward, and Heroes were canceled, and with the Lost finale almost here, people are wondering what to do on Tuesdays now. One word, people — Glee. And in a sort of Phoenix rising from the ashes story, Futurama has been resurrected and is set to premiere on Comedy Central this Summer!

Find out what new sci-fi shows are premiering in the Fall and get a sneak peek at the Batman-esque show, The Cape, when you read more.

• Here's a peek at Kanye West's upcoming guest spot on The Cleveland Show — Entertainment Weekly
• Katy Perry, George Lopez, and Alan Cumming hop on the Smurf train — MTV Movies Blog
• Is Parks and Recreation stealing Adam Scott from Party Down? — Vulture
• Get a sneak peek at Navid's new lady on 90210 — Zap2it
• Johnny Depp has a language all his own — Inside Movies
• New episodes of Futurama will premiere on Comedy Central in June — Hitfix
• A Police Academy reboot is in the works — Cinematical
• Check out the top Gossip Girl looks from all three seasons — CelebStyle
• Martha Stewart is trying to team up with Mark Burnett for a new lifestyle makeover show — Movieline

Many of you were saying "yay!" to the news that Futurama would be returning for 26 all-new episodes. But what if the original cast doesn't come along for the revival?

Turns out Paula Abdul isn't the only star having contract negotiation problems these days: Talks have broken down between the original voice cast of Futurama and the 20th Century Fox TV studio about how much the actors should be paid for their work. Writes Variety:

The stars had all expressed interest in returning. But with the budget for Futurama dramatically slashed, the salary offers came in well below what the thesps were asking — believed to be around $75,000 per episode.

So, the studio has hired casting directors to start auditioning new Benders, Frys, and Leelas. That could just be a negotiating tactic — it's been used before for The Simpsons — but it could also really mean that the original actors don't return.

When I think about voice recasting, I always think about Disney's revival of the Nickelodeon cartoon Doug — I loved the original Doug, but it totally weirded me out to hear a different voice coming out of Doug's mouth. (Coincidentally, the original voice of Doug — Billy West — also voices Fry on Futurama!) If the original cast doesn't come along, would you still be excited for the new episodes of Futurama? Or, do you think that without them, the show isn't worth bringing back?

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