Family Guy Movie?
Show Creator Seth Macfarlane Talks About Possible Feature Film
Will there be a Family Guy movie? Seth Macfarlane says it’s possible.
Now that The Simpsons have made the transition from small screen to silver screen, the Family Guy creator Macfarlane is eyeing the potential of cranking out a feature film based on his sleeper hit animated comedy. However, much like The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, Macfarlane wants to make sure that the quality of scripts and production on the weekly show doesn’t go down the tubes while he’s working on a film.
"We have been trying to figure out how to do that and the series at the same time without the series suffering," he told The Hollywood Reporter on Saturday. Macfarlane’s proposed fix would have The Winner creator, and former Family Guy writer, Ricky Blitt start working on the movie script.
However, Macfarlane has no idea what sort of story he would have for a Family Guy movie, and whether or not Twentieth Century Fox would sign off on it. “Nothing’s official,” he says, noting that if Fox backed the idea, he could crank out a flick in a couple of years.
However, Macfarlane knows what he doesn’t want in a Family Guy Movie script. “I don't want to do 'The Griffins must save the world,'” he says. He prefers to have “a small story” that can be explored in the confines of a 90-minute feature film.
Will the success or failure of The Simpsons Movie affect whether or not a Family Guy flick gets made? Macfarlane says no, but he did predict that The Simpsons Movie will make a fair amount of coin.
"But it will be interesting to see if it works," he said.
In other news, Macfarlane said that the live-action comedy The Winner, for which he and Blitt are executive producers, may yet return from the dead. This scenario is very similar to what happened to the Family Guy: the series was canceled in 2000 and in 2002 before strong DVD sales and a successful run on The Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim convinced Fox executives to give the show yet another shot.
"It is looking like there could be a future life for The Winner,” he said, without giving any details about how Fox might resuscitate the show. “I hope it pans out,"
Fun Fact: Family Guy has many detractors. In the 2-part South Park episode “Cartoon Wars,” Trey Parker and Matt Stone portrayed Family Guy writers as manatees who wrote scripts by pushing rubber “idea balls” with random story topics into bins. Animation guru, and Ren & Stimpy creator, John Kricfalusi once dissed the show, saying, "If you're a kid wanting to be a cartoonist today, and you're looking at Family Guy, you don't have to aim very high . . . The standards are extremely low."
