Futurama Voices Could Be Recast 260
Svippy writes "According to reports surfacing on the Internet, Futurama may be recast. The animated series is due to return next year on Comedy Central, but may not be the same as we once knew it. 'As part of the announcement, the show's producers said stars including West, Sagal and DiMaggio had all signed on to return. Turns out that wasn't true. 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.' Phil LaMarr posted 20th Century Fox's request for auditions on his Facebook page. However, some are skeptical about whether it's a real casting call or purely a stunt to reduce the salaries of the voice actors."
ob (Score:5, Insightful)
Not watching without original cast. (Score:3, Insightful)
Good news everybody! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, this isn't good news at all.
Seriously, the voice actors in Futurama gave their characters heart and soul. It's not just that the actors are good (they are, of course) but the characters have grown along with the actors, such that in my mind, and in the mind of many fans I am sure, the two are inseparable.
Without the original cast, I won't be watching, simple as that.
It's going to cost more money in the long run to produce an abject failure than to put more money into the show from the start and hoping the fanbase comes back.
Re:Not watching without original cast. (Score:2, Insightful)
Speech-to-text (Score:3, Insightful)
They have what, 100+ hours of speech recorded for Futurama, presumably the original masters as well? Probably 1,000 hours of speech for each character on The Simpsons on masters. Not to mention accurate closed captioning for the voicings. How hard would it be to write an algorithm to cut and paste the correct words (picking the correct word inflection based on word placement in the sentence/context - presumably there are angry, happy, elated, monotone versions of most words, and the sound files can be edited to convincingly make them sound in context) together? Sure, you'd have to hand-synthesize the occasional odd word or celebrity-head-in-a-jar's name, but we're probably not very far off from being able to fire the voice actors after the third season of a dialog-driven cartoon.
Re:Good news everybody! (Score:3, Insightful)
Without the original cast, I won't be watching, simple as that.
That's what we said about Star Trek. And yet, we keep going...
Re:Speech-to-text (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hello... Smithers... You're. quite. good. at. turning. me. on."
I'll give you a hint. If that were in any way possible, we'd be seeing it now. At least for some show like "Pokemon" where the dialog tend to be extremely simple.
We'll see truly convincing computer-generated people long before we'll be hearing them.
Re:Comentary (Score:5, Insightful)
Would they really risk the entire show for some money, when they care so much for it?
I've had some jobs I really enjoyed. The products were good, the people were great, and I loved my time there. If they called me right now and offered me less money than they used to pay me, I wouldn't go back.
Re:ob (Score:2, Insightful)
Farnsworth was known to say "Bad news, everyone" on occasion- like when the supercollider superexploded. Perhaps it is you who must hand over your card, hmm?
Re:Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ob (Score:3, Insightful)
'Bad news, everyone' usually implied something that impacted Farnsworth himself, or news that the crew would not be sent on some suicidal task.
If it sucked for someone else, it was usually good news. :)
Re:So how are they going to explain the new voices (Score:1, Insightful)
Doctor Who?
Re:if someone knows the amount (Score:1, Insightful)
In a sane society, the market value for decent voice acting would be a fair bit lower than that
Says who?
I completely agree, personally, that some corporate executives, the elite tier of film and television stars, and many professional athletes are overpaid, but the market has spoken. It's self-correcting. As soon as those people stop being as "in demand", their salary falls.
A an average basketball player on an average team makes what works out to about $50,000 per game, whether he steps on the court or not. I don't see any reason objectively why an actor shouldn't be paid $75,000 an episode if there's enough revenue thanks to their contributions to support that level of pay. There's nothing insane about that.
Doctors, lawyers, and executives, and to some extent accountants and those in finance can fairly command high salaries because of the substantial financial risk those professions entail. Highly demanded artists and thinkers can command large sums because of the unique nature of their talents.
The only part that's insane is the value society places on professional athletes and celebrities, and not on teachers and sanitation workers. That's not really the fault of the athletes and celebrities, though--if your profession suddenly skyrocketed in value, you'd be entitled to charge what your services were worth to you, up to whatever the market will bear.
Re:Comentary (Score:3, Insightful)
look at it this way, they got canned from one job they did very well and now the boss wants them back. It's obviously only going to be one season maybe two tops. While they get royalties, it's really just one paycheck, one time and it means moving across the country for several months only to not have a job when you're done, and possibly giving up other career-building NEW work. The studio gets to keep selling episodes and collecting ads for years to come.
Re:ob (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what Slashdot is all about, two comic book store guys battling it out :D
Re:ob (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a look at the "tags" around here. Assume I could click on them to find more stories with those tags -- oh, I can't. I click on them and NOTHING HAPPENS.
But let's assume I could. Typical tags are "haha", "whocares", "ohno", or crap like "badidea", "goodidea", and so forth. Who the HELL actually says, "Gee, I want to read more stories on the subject of 'haha', I'll just click on that... there we go..."
Forget tags. They are useless in general, and slashdot's implentation of them is doubly useless.
Re:ob (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the tags here serve one useful purpose: they provide a quick indicator of most Slashdotters' opinions related to the article. After all, a time-honored tradition around here is not R'ing TFA. With tags, now you don't have to read the comments, either.