Matt Groening's Futurama, long a mainstay of the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, is moving to Comedy Central where it will debut on Wednesday, January 2nd at 8 pm (ET, PT). Comedy Central will air all 72 original episodes of Futurama along with four new 'Television Premiere' movies starting with Bender's Big Score, which was released on DVD last month and which will air on Comedy Central during Q1 2008. Comedy Central has not yet indicated whether or not the four new direct-to-DVD (or TV) Futurama movies, which it intends to air first as movies, will eventually be broken up into new individual episodes or remain in their current feature-length form.
During its premiere week, Futurama Comedy Central will air two back-to-back episodes of the series from 8-9 pm from Wednesday through Friday. In the following weeks, single episodes will air at 9 pm (ET, PT) Monday through Thursday, with two episodes slated for Friday night starting at 9 pm.
Futurama remains a very viable property with loads of merchandise starting with the excellent comic book series published by Bongo. A Futurama/Simpsons crossover hardcover is planned for 2008 (see 'Simpsons/Futurama Crossover'). Toynami has released a superb series of Futurama action figures, while Dark Horse has also released a number of cool Futurama items and Rocket