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Seth MacFarlane to Reboot Sagan's "Cosmos" for FOX

post #1 of 9
8/5/11 at 10:25am
Thread Starter 

http://www.deadline.com/2011/08/fox-orders-13-episode-sequel-to-carl-sagans-cosmos-docu-series-to-be-produced-by-seth-macfarlane-for-2013-launch/

 

Have to say: I am not just surprised, I am amazed. Outright amazed.

 

Quote:
After recently signing on to reboot one classic TV show, Hanna-Barbera's The Flintstones, Seth MacFarlane is taking on another iconic TV series, Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Fox has greenlighted Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, a 13-part docu-series from Family Guy creator MacFarlane and late Sagan's original collaborators – his widow, writer/producer Ann Druyan and astrophysicist Steven Soter. Envisioned as a successor to the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning original 13-part program, which was hosted by Sagan, the new Cosmos series will be hosted by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

 

Quote:
According to the producers, the new series will tell "the story of how human beings began to comprehend the laws of nature and find our place in space and time. It will take viewers to other worlds and travel across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale. The most profound scientific concepts will be presented with stunning clarity, uniting skepticism and wonder, and weaving rigorous science with the emotional and spiritual into a transcendent experience."

 

A lot of us in here grew up with programming that was SCIENCE...not necessarily science-fiction, but there were shows on TV that were real, honest-to-goodness science that we'd get to absorb. This move by FOX is gutsy. But it does something a whole lot of TV broadcasters take for complete granted: actually serving the public interest.

 

Getting kids and people excited about science is fantastic, and I'm going to hope this program is a slam-dunk, because the original Cosmos is great stuff.

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post #2 of 9
8/5/11 at 10:45am

"MacFarlane" and "Cosmos" are two names I never thought I would be putting together in a sentence. I hope it works, because we have a generation now that doesn't even realize how starved it is for a show like this.

 

ETA: Naturally...

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post #3 of 9
8/5/11 at 10:59am

LOL. Brian and Stewie are all about this shit.

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post #4 of 9
8/5/11 at 11:52am
Thread Starter 

I will lose my shit if Neil deGrasse Tyson works in a "Jeeeeee-sus-asaurus Rex" somewhere on the show.

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post #5 of 9
8/6/11 at 4:02pm

Nice job, Reddit.

Quote:

In the First episode of Seth Macfarlane's COSMOS, Niel DeGrasse Tyson play Earth, a hard working, under-appreciated planet with a large eccentric family living in the small-town Solar System.

 

This hilarious ensemble includes his two-faced wife The Moon (who hates on The Situation for stealing her schtick); danger-loving shrimpy son Mercury; hot but poisonous daughter Venus; and dry Mars who's always worrying if people are going to find germs on him.

 

Their neighbors are the Gas Giants, bloated gaseous slobs with tons of strange kids, including patriarch and matriarch Jupiter and Saturn, weird self-conscious Uranus and the far-out hippie Neptune. Also hanging around the neighborhood is wacky homeless world Pluto, who keeps insisting he's a planet but everyone else tries to shun.

 

Whenever anyone mentions climate change on the show, DeGrasse-Tyson exclaims, "I have your global warming right here!" and farts loudly. Macfarlane hopes it becomes the show's catch phrase.

 

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post #6 of 9
8/6/11 at 7:33pm

Man, Cosmos. This actually aired right around a year before I was born but I've watched the entire run a ton of times over the years and I'm still a little kid sitting too close to the TV when it comes to Carl Sagan. I'm a dad and though both of my girls are pretty young I still try to really impart a love of science, especially astronomy. We just bought our first "family" telescope and it's gotten a lot of play in the last few weeks and a lot of good nights sitting out in the dark just taking it all in. It's stuff I hope to keep with me as they get older and I really feel like that sense of wonder comes from the original series. I have no idea how it'll end up but I think we can all agree there needs to be more stuff like this on tv.

 

I'm sure most of you have seen this but it still puts a big, goofy smile on my face. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc

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post #7 of 9
8/6/11 at 10:36pm
If you follow Macfarlane on twitter it's not surprising. He's s MASSIVE fan of Sagan, he rates The Demon Haunted World as his favorite book of all time and regularly retweets Tyson.

Given the clout he has at Fox and probably more importantly Professor Brian Cox' successful series about the Solar System on the BBC (which apparently saw a doubling in telescope sales) makes it less surprising.

I think 7 million people tuned into Cox' show so it's a reasonably safe bet.

Macfarlane is a LOT smarter than you'd think. For every lame joke he comes up with on Twitter he also makes some fantastic retweets and FF or book suggestions

EDITED well after the fact for my iPhone's fucking spellchecker changing words.
Edited by Andy Bain - 8/7/11 at 1:47pm
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post #8 of 9
8/7/11 at 10:24am

So...I'm assuming this will be a mix of animation (given MacFarlane's involvement) and live-action (given the megawatt star power that is Neil DeGrasse Tyson)? That could be really interesting. I've always thought MacFarlane could really impress us if he would step outside his comfort zone.

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post #9 of 9
8/10/11 at 12:47pm

vwGWK.jpg

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