“Futurama returns as an all-new feature-length epic DVD, Bender’s Big Score, which was released in stores Tuesday. This disc will be the first of four movie-length episode arcs that will be released in roughly six-month increments. Reviews have been mixed regarding the first release; Ted Anthony of The Associated Press said the movie is frequently laugh-out-loud funny but as a story, it barely hangs together.”
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Futurama returns as an all-new feature-length epic DVD, Bender’s Big Score, which was released in stores Tuesday.

This disc will be the first of four movie-length episode arcs that will be released in roughly six-month increments.

Reviews have been mixed regarding the first release; Ted Anthony of The Associated Press said the movie is frequently laugh-out-loud funny but as a story, it barely hangs together.

Futurama first premiered on the Fox Television Network in March 1999. It is about Philip J. Fry, a pizza delivery boy working on New Years’ Eve, who is tricked into delivering a pie to a dark laboratory just before midnight. He falls into a chamber and is frozen for 1,000 years.

When he wakes, he finds himself again in the role of a delivery driver, aboard a space ship with a foul-mouthed, kleptomaniac robot named Bender, the one-eyed mutant Leela, the stumbling crab-man Dr. Zoidberg and Fry’s distant future relative Professor Hubert Farnsworth.

Like Matt Groening’s other Fox series, The Simpsons, Futurama had frequent guest stars, though celebrities in the future were reduced to heads in jars.

Futurama ran for 72 episodes until August 2003. It has since been in syndicated reruns on cable and sold in DVD sets.

Comedy Central picks up the cable broadcast rights of the new direct-to-DVD episodes, which will each be broken up into four serial episodes, starting in January 2008. So far Fox has not picked up the broadcast rights for the new episodes.

David Cohen, executive producer for the series, has given little information about the second disc, other than it will continue the story left at the end of the first DVD. It will also contain comedian David Cross in a role as a planet-sized alien. Cohen has also stated that the discs and syndicated episodes will differ slightly, with treats for fans on both formats.

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