Futurama season 11 starts on July 24th, with half the episodes promised

Sweet mama, it’s Futurama! Hulu finally announced it: Futurama will return for its 11th season on July 24th, 2023, giving us the chance to check back in with Bender, Fry, Leela, and the rest of the Planet Express crew.

Unfortunately, we won’t get the original 20 episodes we were promised when the season was announced in February last year. Hulu didn’t say why that is, but we can speculate. The ongoing Writers Guild of America strike is a possibility, and we’ve asked Hulu about that; we’ll update if we receive an answer.

Anyway, here’s a teaser:

The new Futurama series will be available for streaming every Monday over its 10-episode run, and Hulu says it’ll hit series tropes like Fry and Leela’s romance, Nibbler’s litter box, and the “secret history of Robot Santa,” plus the usual collection of tales inspired by current events — so there’ll be a pandemic, storylines about vaccines, cryptocurrency, and more.

Last year, negotiations to bring back the whole cast hit a rough patch when John DiMaggio, who plays Bender, basically told Hulu to bite his proverbial shiny metal ass, which Deadline reported was because the streaming giant didn’t offer enough money. That pissed off fans of the show, leading to a viral DiMaggio tweet about it, but a few weeks later, the two came to an agreement as he got a pay bump, though it sounds like Hulu didn’t exactly say “shut up and take my money” — Deadline reported that the increase was “minimal at best.”

Disclosure: Vox Media’s editorial team, which includes The Verge, is also unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East.