Today we can show you the first trailer of Futurama: Bender’s Game, already the third Futurama feature from the planned set of four straight-to-dvd’s.

In this adventure the Planet Express crew find themselves in a Dungeons & Dragons -like fantasy world, where Bender gets very knightly, Leela transforms into a centaur and the professor shows his sorcery skills. Seeing this promising trailer, we can expect the movie to be full of references to the well known fantasy stories.

Bender’s Game will be released at the end of this year.

Horton Hears a Who is a new animation movie produced by Blue Sky Studios (Fox) based on the book by Dr. Seuss. Voices for this movie include Jim Carrey and Steve Carell.

Horton is an elephant with a great imagination. One ordinary day he hears a voice coming out of a hovering dust-heap. The voice calls desperately for his help. Horton assumes the beings calling him are probably too small to be seen by an elephant’s eye. But how small they may be, everyone has got the right to a good life, so he does everything in his powers to protect the dust-heap. His friends from the jungle soon declare Horton to be a nutcase…

And it didn’t quite work out as planned…

After The Simpsons and Futurama the next Fox animation series might get a feature-length movie. The creator of Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane, told The Hollywood Reporter he is enthusiastic about making a feature film. Family Guy follows the adventures of the dysfunctional family Griffin. With an enormous dose of absurdity this show takes it a step further than The Simpsons.

In 2005 there has already been a movie titled Stewie Griffin - The untold Story. However, this was a straight-to-DVD release and was primarily aimed at the real fans. MacFarlane doesn’t have a story yet, but he definitely doesn’t want a “the Griffins are saving the world from destruction” plot. Ricky Blitt, the ex-writer of the series is a desired candidate. Click “Read More” to see a clip from Family Guy where Stewie is training for the Olympics.

(Read more…)

Last week the nominations for the yearly Emmy-awards have been announced. This price can be seen as the Oscars for television productions. Two of the categories are devoted to animation:  “Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour)” and ”Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming One Hour Or More)”. 

And the nominees are…

Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour)

Avatar: The Last Airbender • City Of Walls And Secrets • Nickelodeon Animation Studio Robot Chicken • Lust For Puppets • ShadowMachine Films South Park • Make Love, Not Warcraft • Central Productions SpongeBob SquarePants • Bummer Vacation / Wig Struck • Nickelodeon Animation Studio in association with United Plankton Pictures, Inc. The Simpsons • The Haw-Hawed Couple • Gracie Films in association with 20th Century Fox

Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming One Hour Or More)

• Good Wilt Hunting (Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends) • Cartoon Network Studios
• Hellboy Animated: Sword Of Storms • Starz Media in association with Revolution Studios
• Secrets Of The Deep • Impossible Pictures in association with Discovery Channel
• Where’s Lazlo? (Camp Lazlo) • Cartoon Network Studios

Apart from these categories there is also a nomination for the episode “Peter’s Two Dads” of Family Guy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.

Barry Sonnenfeld, the successful director of movies like Men in Black and The Addams Family, is going to be a creative consultant on the new animated feature called Space Chimps. Space Chimps is a project of Vanguard Animations (Valiant, Hapilly n’Ever After) about (you’ve guessed it) chimps in space!

Ham III, the somewhat lazy grandson of the first chimp in space, is stimulated to step into his grandfather’s legendary footsteps. Together with two colleague astronaut chimps he takes part in an exiting space mission for NASA. The goal for this mission is a weird, unknown planet in a far away galaxy. On this planet it soon becomes clear that the aliens are being exploited by the dictatorial regime of its leader. It’s now up to our never-do-well chimp to save the aliens from their doom.

The creators think of the movie as an epic and comical space adventure. Andy Samberg, Cheryl Hines, Jeff Daniels, Stanly Tucci and Patrick Warburton are some of the cast members. The movie is directed by Kirk DeMicco. Some additional musical aspects are provided by the popular Blue Man Group. The movie will be released in May 2008 in the US.

The marketing for The Simpsons Movie knows no boundaries. The Cerne Abbas Giant, a 60 meter (197 feet) high centuries-old chalk figure, isn’t lonely anymore on a hilltop in the British Dorset. He has gotten company by Homer Simpson, drawn in a biodegradable paint, luckily with pants on and of course a doughnut in his hand. Because of the biodegradable paint, the drawing will disappear as soon as it starts to rain. The Pagan Federation, a group of followers of the Cerne Abbas Giant, announces to start executing rain dances so Homer will dilute.

On July 24th, the night before the premiere of The Simspsons Movie, Homes will be a guest on Jay Leno. His appearance will consist of just a short monologue at the beginning of the show. In a fictitious statement Homer says: “I understand I’m doing a monologue, I hope it doesn’t involve talking.”

Since 2003 there haven’t been any new episodes of Futurama, the animation series created by Matt Groening and David X Cohen. This will change now: during the period 2007-2008 four feature-length movies will be released. Each one of these movies will be cut in 4 episodes that will be broadcast as a series on Comedy Central. The movies won’t be shown in the cinema, but will go straight to DVD.

Despite winning some Emmy’s, the series never managed to become a huge success. So for everyone who doesn’t know Futurama, here’s a short description: Fry is a pizza delivery boy from New York, who gets cryogenically frozen and wakes up in the year 2999. He finds himself a job at Planet Express, a futuristic delivery service, founded by his far and especially old family member professor Farnsworth. Together with among others Leela, a handsome one-eyed captain and Bender, a rude and selfish robot, they deliver packets in the five quadrants of the universe.

The first movie is called Bender’s Big Score and tells the story of a hostile takeover of Planet Express. Bender is used by criminals to accomplish their evil plans. Al Gore has a cameo and the movie is planned for American release on December 4th 2007.

The Beast with a Billion Backs will become the second movie, Bender’s Game the third and Into the Wild Green Yonder is the title of movie number four.

On the Dutch website Films en Sterren you can watch a very interesting (English spoken) interview with Matt Groening, the creator of the Simpsons. He talks about the production of the movie and much more. Did you know the hairs on Homer’s head contain a hidden signature of Groening? The hairs form the letter M and his ear is shaped like a G. Groening changed the ear after a while, because he thought it was too obvious. I never noticed it…

The town Springfield in Vermont is the winner in the Simpsons Hometown Movie Challenge. About 14 different towns in America named Springfield took part in this competition with the chance to have the exclusive première of this animation movie. In this news video you will see the winning clip of Springfield, Vermont.

On the new website of The Simpsons Movie you can find an interesting feature: Create your Simpsons Avatar. On top of the screen, click on ‘create your avatar’ and choose your yellowness, hairstyle, body structure and T-shirt print. It probably won’t be a perfect match, but it is nice to play with.