IGN
IGN wrote:February 27, 2004 - Rejoice, Griffin fans, production is about to restart on The Family Guy. Seth MacFarlane, the brains behind the show, tells IGN he's been given the go-ahead and the only question mark left is whether the new material will air initially on Fox or on Cartoon Network.
"Cartoon Network will be involved regardless," he says. "Whether it goes there permanently or winds up on Fox first and then Cartoon Network remains to be seen. So at the very least it will be on Cartoon Network, which is great because at the end of the day that's where we built our biggest fan base. So I'm happy either way."
He's doing what he can to restore as much of the old writing team as possible. However, there are a lot of good writers looking for work in Hollywood thanks to the reality show craze.
In fact, the series lost a few people before season three began, but MacFarlane expects to get back more of the original writers now than he did when season three was in production. The voice over actors won't be too much of a problem since it's animated and the voice recordings can be done around the actor's schedule.
If production begins in April, as he hopes, MacFarlane will present the new material to Fox around December, and it will decide if it picks up the show for 2005 or if it goes directly to Cartoon Network. That may seem like a long time, but MacFarlane says it would take even longer to get something done if he didn't have five leftover scripts from the show. Three are in good shape but two will need some rewrites, he says.
His other pitch, American Dad, is still in production. He created the show with Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman, who were supervising producers on The Family Guy. He describes the show as "Family Guy meets All in the Family, designed to poke fun at the particularly intense political state we're in right now."
The dad, Stan, is an extreme right-wing Republican while one of his daughters is an extreme left-wing Democrat. Stan works for CIA and has an alien (as in from outer space, not an illegal) living with the family. Fox is expected to decide on whether to pick up the series this spring.
The resurrection of The Family Guy comes after a groundswell of fan support, the strong ratings on Cartoon Network and stellar sales of the DVD sets. The Family Guy Volume 1 and Volume 2 have combined sales of close to two million units, according to MacFarlane.
"I think that's what made them sit up and take notice and say maybe there's more money to be made off this property and this thing is not dead yet," he says. "Because of DVD and cable, the show has been able to build an audience that, in the past, a show could only build on a network. So it's an indication that the landscape is changing a lot."
Needless to say, he's happy to do double duty with The Family Guy and American Dad. "It's gonna be a challenge but this is what I do and what I love doing, so it's a monumental challenge that I'm happy to undertake. I'm thrilled. I think it's great," says MacFarlane.
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