Family Guy is an American
animated television sitcom created by
Seth MacFarlane for the
Fox Broadcasting Company. The
series centers on the Griffins, a
dysfunctional family consisting of
parents
Peter and
Lois; their children
Meg,
Chris, and
Stewie; and their pet dog
Brian. The show uses frequent
cutaway gags, often in the form of
tangential vignettes which parody
American culture.
MacFarlane conceived
Family Guy after developing two
animated films,
The Life of Larry and
Larry & Steve. MacFarlane redesigned Larry, the films'
protagonist, and renamed him Peter, also redesigning Larry's dog
Steve, who developed into Brian. Shortly after the third season of
Family Guy aired in 2003, Fox cancelled the series.
However, favorable DVD sales and high ratings on syndicated reruns
convinced the network to renew the show in 2004.
The series takes place
in a fictional town in Rhode Island
based on MacFarlane's upbringing and
education.
Family Guy has been nominated for eleven
Primetime Emmy Awards, of which it won
three. The show has also been nominated for eleven
Annie Awards, winning three times. It has
garnered three
Golden Reel
Award nominations, winning once. In 2009, it was nominated for
an Emmy for
Outstanding
Comedy Series, the first time an animated series was nominated
for the award since
The
Flintstones in 1961.
Family Guy has also received
negative criticism, including three lawsuits, and low reviews for
its similarities to the animated series
The Simpsons.
Many
tie-in media have been released,
including
Stewie
Griffin: The Untold Story, a
straight-to-DVD special released in 2005;
Family Guy: Live in
Vegas, a soundtrack-DVD combo released in 2005, featuring
music from the show as well as original music created by MacFarlane
and
Walter Murphy; a
video game and
pinball machine, released in 2006 and
2007, respectively; and, since 2005, six books published by
HarperCollins based on the
Family
Guy universe. In 2008, MacFarlane confirmed that the cast was
interested in producing a feature film and that he was working on a
story for film adaptation. A spin-off series,
The Cleveland Show, premiered on
September 27, 2009 as a part of the "Animation Domination" lineup
on Fox. The eighth season of
Family Guy premiered on
September 27, 2009.
History
Seth MacFarlane created a short film in 1995
entitled The Life of Larry, while studying at the Rhode Island
School of Design
. The short featured a middle-aged slob named
Larry Cummings, his cynical talking dog, Steve, supportive wife
Lois, and pudgy teenage son Milt. The film begins with a
live-action segment where MacFarlane, as himself, briefly describes
the show and its characters. After being hired at
Hanna-Barbera, MacFarlane was given a chance
in 1996 to direct a
sequel entitled
Larry
and Steve, a seven-minute short broadcast as part of
Cartoon Network's
World Premiere Toons. The film
stars MacFarlane, who reprises his role as Larry Cummings and his
talking dog Steve, among various background characters, and
Lori Alan, who provided additional
character voices.
MacFarlane conceived the idea for the
Family Guy in 1999,
developing it out of his two short films. MacFarlane's shorts
caught the attention of Fox, who gave him $50,000 to make a pilot.
McFarlane completed the 11 minute pilot after six months of
hand animation. Pleased with the pilot, Fox gave the green light to
the
Family Guy series. Although Fox initially announced
Family Guy s cancellation following the second season, Fox
decided to make a third season, after which they canceled the
series near the end of 2003. However, reruns on
Adult Swim drove up interest in the show,
and its DVD releases did quite well, selling over 2.2 million
copies in one year, which renewed network interest.
Family
Guy returned to production in 2004, marking the first revival
of a television show based on DVD sales. Fox president
Gail Berman said that it was one of her most
difficult decisions to cancel the show, and was therefore happy it
would return. The network also began production of a film based on
the series. The show celebrated its official
100th episode during its sixth season in
November 2007, resulting in the show's
syndication. The show is contracted to
continue producing episodes until 2012.
Production
Staff
Family Guy has had many executive producers in its
history, including creator Seth MacFarlane,
Daniel Palladino,
Lolee Aries, and
David Zuckerman.
David A. Goodman joined the show as a co-executive
producer in season three, and eventually became an executive
producer.
Alex Borstein, the voice of
Lois, has also worked as both an
executive and supervising producer, for the
fourth and
fifth seasons.
The
Family Guy writing staff collaborate on which ideas
and characters to use for each episode. If a majority of the
writers agree on an episode idea, it is then approved by MacFarlane
, who must receive an endorsement from Fox before beginning
production. For the first months of production, the writers shared
one office lent to them by the
King
of the Hill production crew. In interviews and on the DVD
commentary of season one, MacFarlane explained that he is a fan of
1930s and 1940s radio programs, particularly the radio thriller
anthology "
Suspense", which
led him to give early episodes ominous titles pertaining to death
and murder like "
Death Has a
Shadow" and "
Mind Over Murder".
McFarlane later explained that the team dropped the naming
convention after individual episodes became hard to identify and
the novelty wore off. Since the
Super Bowl XXXVIII
halftime show controversy, the writers have been required to
tone down the show's crude humor for television broadcasts. In
2009, Fox refused to air an episode dealing with abortion.
During the
2007–2008
Writers Guild of America strike, official production of the
show halted for most of December 2007 and various periods
afterwards. Fox continued producing episodes without creator Seth
MacFarlane's final approval, which he termed "a colossal dick move"
in an interview with
Variety. Though MacFarlane refused to
work on the show, his contract under Fox required him to contribute
to any episodes it would subsequently produce. Production
officially resumed after the end of the strike, with
regularly-airing episodes recommencing on February 17,
2008.
Voice cast
Seth MacFarlane voices three of the
show's main characters:
Peter Griffin,
Brian Griffin, and
Stewie Griffin. MacFarlane chose to voice
these characters himself, believing it would be easier to portray
the voices he already envisioned than for someone else to attempt
it.
MacFarlane drew inspiration for the voice of
Peter from a security guard he overheard talking while attending
the Rhode Island
School of Design
. Stewie's voice was based on the voice of
English actor
Rex Harrison, especially
his performance in the 1964 musical drama film
My Fair Lady. MacFarlane uses his
regular speaking voice when playing Brian.
MacFarlane also provides the voices for various other recurring and
one-time only characters, most prominently those of the Griffins'
neighbor
Glenn Quagmire, news anchor
Tom Tucker and Lois's father
Carter Pewterschmidt.
Alex Borstein voices
Lois Griffin, Asian correspondent
Tricia Takanawa,
Loretta Brown and Lois' mother
Barbara Pewterschmidt.
Borstein was asked to provide a voice for the
pilot while she was working on
MADtv. She had not met MacFarlane or
seen any of his artwork and said it was "really sight unseen". At
the time, Borstein performed in a stage show in Los Angeles, in
which she played a redhead mother whose voice she had based on one
of her cousins. The voice was originally slower, but when
MacFarlane heard it, he replied "Make it a little less
annoying...and speed it up, or every episode will last four
hours".
Seth Green primarily plays
Chris Griffin and
Neil Goldman. Green stated that he
did an impression of the
"Buffalo Bill"
character from the thriller film
The Silence of the
Lambs during his audition. His main inspiration for Chris'
voice came from envisioning how "Buffalo Bill" would sound if he
were speaking through a public address system at a
McDonald's.
Mila Kunis and
Lacey Chabert have both played the voices of
Meg Griffin. Chabert voiced Meg Griffin
for the first production season (15 episodes). However, because of
a contractual agreement, she was never credited. Chabert left the
series because of time conflicts with her role on
Party of Five and schoolwork. Kunis won
the role after auditions and a slight rewrite of the character, in
part due to her performance on
That
'70s Show. MacFarlane called Kunis back after her first
audition, instructing her to speak slower, and then told her to
come back another time and enunciate more. Once she claimed that
she had it under control, MacFarlane hired her. Kunis described her
character as "the scapegoat." She further explained, "Meg gets
picked on a lot. But it's funny. It's like the middle child. She is
constantly in the state of being an awkward 14-year-old, when
you're kind of going through puberty and what-not. She's just in
perpetual mode of humiliation. And it's fun."
Mike Henry voices both
Cleveland Brown and
Herbert, as well as some minor
recurring characters like
Bruce
the performance artist and
The Greased
up Deaf Guy. Henry met MacFarlane at the Rhode Island School of
Design and kept in touch with him after they graduated. A few years
later, MacFarlane contacted him about being part of the show; he
agreed and came on as both a writer and voice actor. During the
show's first four seasons, he was credited as a guest star, but
beginning with
season five's
"
Prick Up Your Ears"
he has been credited as a main cast member.
Other recurring cast members include:
Patrick Warburton as Joe Swanson;
Adam West playing himself as mayor
Adam West;
Jennifer Tilly as Bonnie Swanson;
John G. Brennan as Mort Goldman;
Carlos Alazraqui as
Jonathan
Weed;
Adam Carolla and
Norm Macdonald as Death;
Lori Alan as
Diane
Simmons; and
Tara Strong as many
additional voices, most notably Meg's singing voice.
Main cast members |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Seth MacFarlane |
Alex Borstein |
Seth Green |
Mila Kunis |
Mike Henry |
Peter Griffin,
Stewie Griffin, Brian Griffin, Glenn
Quagmire, Tom Tucker,
Carter Pewterschmidt,
others |
Lois Griffin, Loretta Brown, Barbara Pewterschmidt,
Tricia Takanawa, others |
Chris Griffin,
Neil Goldman, others |
Meg Griffin |
Cleveland Brown,
Herbert, others |
Setting
MacFarlane
resided in Providence during his time as a student at Rhode Island
School of Design
, and the show, as a consequence, contains distinct
Rhode Island landmarks similar to real-world locations.
MacFarlane
often borrows the names of Rhode Island locations and icons such as
Pawtucket
and Buddy Cianci for
use in the show. MacFarlane, in an interview with local
WNAC
Fox 64 News, stated that the town is modeled after
Cranston, Rhode
Island
.
Several
times every episode, the actual Providence
skyline can be seen in the distance.
The three
buildings that are depicted are, from left to right and furthest to
closest, One Financial
Center
, 50 Kennedy
Plaza
, and the Bank of America
Tower. This ordering of buildings and the angle at which
they are viewed indicates that Quahog is primarily west of downtown
Providence if it is to have a real-world counterpart. However, in a
few episodes Quahog is shown to have a coastline, which only
Cranston and Providence possess.
This is supported by the fact that the
real-world "31 Spooner Street" is located in Providence,
immediately west of Roger Williams Park
.
Production issues
Cancellation and renewal
After only two episodes of the second season, Fox removed
Family Guy from the network's permanent schedule, and
began airing episodes irregularly. The show returned in March 2000
to finish airing the remaining 21 episodes of season two. The third
season comprised another 21 episodes and began airing from
July 11, 2001 to February 14, 2002. During its second
and third-season runs, Fox frequently moved the show around
different days and time slots with little or no notice and,
consequently, the show's
ratings
suffered.
When Family Guy aired in the
United
Kingdom
, the subsequent DVD release
there on (November 12, 2001) lumped the first seven episodes
of the second season with the first season, leaving both seasons
with 14 episodes each. Thus, later UK DVD releases did not
share consistent labeling with the original American seasons (e.g.
the
Family Guy: Season 6 DVD features Season 5
episodes).
Fox publicly announced that the show had been canceled in 2002, at
the end of the second season. In spite of the announced
cancellation, in 2003 Fox decided to produce a third season.
Family Guy was assigned to a tough time slot, Thursday
nights at 8:00 p.m.
ET. This slot
brought it into competition with
Survivor and
Friends. The situation was later referenced in
Stewie Griffin: The
Untold Story. During the third season, Fox announced that
the show had been officially cancelled. The series was renewed in
2005 for its fourth season due to strong DVD sales and
syndication on basic-cable
networks.
"North by North Quahog" was the first episode to be broadcast after
the show's cancellation. It was written by MacFarlane and directed
by
Peter Shin. MacFarlane believed the
show's three year hiatus was beneficial because animated shows do
not normally have hiatuses, and towards the end of their seasons
"... you see a lot more sex jokes and (bodily function) jokes
and signs of a fatigued staff that their brains are just fried".
With "North by North Quahog", the writing staff tried to keep the
show "... exactly as it was" before its cancellation, and did
not "... have the desire to make it any
slicker" than it already was.
Walter Murphy, who had composed music for the
show before its cancellation, returned to compose the music for
"North by North Quahog". Murphy and the orchestra recorded an
arrangement of
Bernard Herrmann's
score from
North by Northwest, a film
referenced multiple times in the episode.
Lawsuits
In March 2007, comedian
Carol
Burnett filed a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox, claiming that
it was a trademark infringement for her
Charwoman cleaning character to be portrayed on the
show without her permission. Besides that, Burnett stated that Fox
violated her publicity rights. She asked for $6 million in damages.
On June 4, 2007, United States District Judge
Dean Pregerson rejected the lawsuit, stating
that the parody was protected under the First Amendment, citing
Hustler Magazine
v. Falwell as a
precedent.
On October 3, 2007,
Bourne Co. Music Publishers filed a lawsuit
accusing the show of infringing its copyright on the song "
When You Wish Upon a Star",
through a parody song entitled "I Need a Jew" appearing in the
episode "
When You Wish
Upon a Weinstein". Bourne Co., the sole United States copyright
owner of the song, alleged the parody pairs a "thinly veiled" copy
of their music with
antisemitic lyrics.
Named in the suit were Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., Fox
Broadcasting Co.,
Cartoon
Network, MacFarlane, and Murphy; the suit sought to stop the
program's distribution and unspecified damages. Because "I Need a
Jew" uses the copyrighted melody of "When You Wish Upon a Star",
without commenting on that song, Bourne argued that it was not a
First
Amendment–protected parody per the ruling in
Campbell v.
Acuff-Rose Music,
Inc.. On March 16, 2009, United States District Judge
Deborah Batts held that
Family
Guy did not infringe on Bourne's copyright when it transformed
the song for comical use in an episode.
In December 2007,
Family Guy was again accused of
copyright infringement when
actor
Art Metrano filing a lawsuit
regarding a scene in
Stewie Griffin: The Untold
Story, in which
Jesus performs
Metrano's signature "magic" act involving absurd,
faux
magical hand gestures while humming the distinctive tune "
Fine and Dandy". Metrano's suit claims
this performance is protected under terms of the United States'
Copyright Act of 1976. 20th
Century Fox, MacFarlane, Callaghan and Borstein were all named in
the suit, which is still ongoing.
Characters
The show revolves around the adventures of the family of
Peter Griffin, a bumbling, but
well-intentioned,
blue-collar
worker. Peter is an
Irish
American Catholic with a prominent
Rhode Island and
Eastern Massachusetts accent. His wife
Lois is a stay-at-home mother and piano
teacher, and has a distinct
New
England accent from being a member of the
Pewterschmidt family of wealthy
socialites. Peter and Lois have three
children:
Meg, their teenage daughter,
who is frequently the butt of Peter's jokes due to her homeliness
and lack of popularity;
Chris, their
teenage son, who is overweight, unintelligent and, in many
respects, a younger version of his father; and
Stewie, their diabolical infant son of
ambiguous sexual orientation who has adult mannerisms and speaks
fluently with an upper-class affected English accent and
stereotypical
archvillain phrases. Living
with the family is
Brian, the family
dog, who is highly
anthropomorphized, drinks
martinis, smokes
cigarettes, drives a car, and engages in human
conversation, though he is still considered a pet in many
respects.
Many recurring characters appear alongside the Griffin family.
These include the family's neighbors: sex-crazed airline-pilot
bachelor
Glenn Quagmire;
mild-mannered deli owner
Cleveland
Brown and his wife (ex-wife as of the fourth-season episode
"
The
Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire")
Loretta Brown with their
hyperactive son,
Cleveland Jr.;
paraplegic police officer
Joe Swanson, his wife
Bonnie and their
baby daughter
Susie. (It
should be noted that Bonnie is pregnant with Susie from the show's
beginning until the
7th episode
of the 7th season); paranoid
Jewish
pharmacist
Mort Goldman, his wife
Muriel and their geeky and annoying son Neil; and elderly
homosexual
ephebophile Herbert. TV news anchors
Tom Tucker and
Diane Simmons, reporter
Tricia Takanawa and
Blaccu-Weather meteorologist
Ollie Williams also make frequent
appearances. Quahog mayor,
Mayor
Adam West (voiced by and named after the real
Adam West) also appears regularly.
Hallmarks
Cutaway
In the majority of episodes, the plot is interrupted by at least
one
cutaway segment. The
segment usually has little to do with the actual story of the
episode and contains a pop culture reference. Many of the cutaways
feature
guest stars,
at times using live-action footage, including
Conway Twitty in three separate episodes,
Will Ferrell in the episode "
Jungle Love", and occasionally a
mixture of live-action and animation, as in a
tap dance duet between Stewie and
Gene Kelly in "
Road to
Rupert". Such cutaways have been criticized heavily by both
critics and other cartoonists, who claim the show relies too much
on "cutaway gags as opposed to plot-driven humour".
Music
Family Guy uses music in many of its episodes, mostly in
the form of musical numbers. These musical numbers are used as both
part of the plot, like in the episodes "
Brian Sings and Swings" and "
From Method to Madness", as well as
for comedic effect or satire, such as in "FCC Song" from "
PTV" and "Vasectomy" from "
Sibling Rivalry". During the
opening sequence of the
59th
Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, Stewie and Brian performed a duet
titled "You can Find It On TV", which poked fun at television shows
in 2007. Two
Family Guy songs have been nominated for (but
did not win) an Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics: "My
Drunken Irish Dad" from "
Peter's Two
Dads", nominated in 2007, and "You've Got a Lot to See" from
"
Brian Wallows and
Peter's Swallows" in 2002. Many of the musical numbers are
included in
Family Guy:
Live in Vegas along with several original songs.
Cultural influences
Television
Family Guy was the first show to return to television due
to DVD sales. After returning from cancellation, it began to
influence on other shows produced by MacFarlane like
American Dad which MacFarlane commented
was a mix of Family Guy with
All in
the Family.
Family Guy spin-off
The Cleveland Show has been
influenced by the show.
Family Guy,
American Dad,
and
The Cleveland Show exist in kind of the same fictional
world. Family Guy has also influenced a live-action show
The Winner which is also
produced by MacFarlane.
The Winner had the same kind of
jokes that
Family Guy has (bit offensive), but the
difference is it was not taken very positively by critics.
Music and idioms
After the initial airing of the episode "
Patriot Games", where newscaster
Tom Tucker announces a report on a
fictional
curse word,
clemen,
many viewers looked up the word on the Internet to try to find a
definition. MacFarlane stated in the episode's DVD commentary that
if someone invents an obscene definition for the word, the show
will have to stop using it (it has not been used since this
episode). The many musical acts of
Family Guy have
influenced
American Dad as it also has similar big-band,
high-production, patter-rich tunes. The FCC song was voted second
on
The Paley Center for
Media special "TV's Funniest Moments", behind
The Chris Rock Show segment "Black
Progress". The episode "
PTV" featured a song
called the FCC. The
59th
Primetime Emmy Awards opened with Stewie and Brian singing
about the upcoming TV season using the tune from "The FCC Song",
originating from this episode. The altered version of the song
contained references to shows such as
Scrubs,
Two and a Half Men and
Cavemen. The episode "Patriot
Games" features a two-and-a-half-minute rendition of the song
"Shipoopi" from the 1957 musical
The
Music Man, conducted by Peter and performed by the
New England Patriots football
team and fans in the stadium. The original number in
The Music
Man was performed by around 40 or 50 singers and around 80
other musicians, as estimated by MacFarlane.
Reception and achievements
Success
Family Guy has received many positive reviews from
critics. Catherine Seipp of the
National
Review Online called it a "nasty but extremely funny" cartoon.
Caryn James of the
The New York
Times, called it a show with an "outrageously satirical
family" and "includes plenty of comic possibilities and parodies."
The Sydney Morning
Herald named
Family Guy the "Show of the Week" on
April 21, 2009, calling it a "pop culture-heavy masterpiece".
Frazier Moore from the
Seattle
Times called it an "endless craving for humor about bodily
emissions". He also called it "breathtakingly smart" and said a
"blend of the ingenious with the raw helps account for its much
broader appeal". He finished up by calling it "rude, crude and
deliciously wrong". The series has also attracted many celebrities,
including
Emily Blunt, who has stated
that
Family Guy is her favorite series and has expressed
strong interest in becoming a guest star on the show.
Criticism and controversy
Family Guy has also received its share of negative
treatment. For example, Ken Tucker of
Entertainment Weekly has
frequently panned the show, grading it with a "
D", and naming it the
worst show of the
1999-2000
television season. The series has frequently been criticized
for using story premises and humor similar to those used in
episodes of
The Simpsons.
The Simpsons depicted Peter Griffin as a "
clone" of
Homer
Simpson in a
Halloween
special, and as a fugitive accused of "Plagiarismo" in the
episode "
The Italian Bob".
Family Guy is also mocked in a two-part episode ("
Cartoon Wars Part I" and "
Cartoon Wars Part II") of
South Park, in which characters call the
show's jokes interchangeable and unrelated to storylines; the
writers of
Family Guy are portrayed as
manatees who write by pushing rubber "idea balls"
inscribed with random topics into a bin. MacFarlane responded to
the criticism, saying it was completely founded and true, even
giving reference to many skits and jokes that were meant for
previously scripted episodes and later cut and recycled in future
episodes.
The show has been publicly criticized by other cartoonists, which
includes
John Kricfalusi, creator of
Ren and Stimpy said: "If
you're a kid wanting to be a cartoonist today, and you're looking
at
Family Guy, you do not have to aim very high. You can
draw
Family Guy when you're ten years old. You do not have
to get any better than that to become a professional cartoonist.
The standards are extremely low". Also the creators of South Park
Trey Parker and
Matt Stone which revealed that they dislike
having their show compared to
Family Guy. Stone and Parker
received support and gratitude from the staffs of
The Simpsons and
King of the Hill for "ripping on
Family Guy" after the airing of the South park episodes
Cartoon Wars. Cartman's intense dislike of the show is also
referred to in the 2008 episode "
Canada
on Strike". In addition, the show's penchant for irreverent
humor led to a controversy over a sequence in which Peter Griffin
dances, in
musical revue fashion, around the
bed of a man with end-stage
AIDS, delivering
the patient's diagnosis in song.
Awards
Family Guy and its cast have been nominated for eleven
Emmy Awards, with three wins. MacFarlane
won the
Outstanding
Voice-Over Performance award for his performance as Stewie,
Murphy and MacFarlane won the Outstanding Music and Lyrics award
for the song "You Got a Lot to See" from the episode "
Brian Wallows and Peter's
Swallows", and
Steven Fonti won the
Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation award for his
story-board work in the episode "
No
Chris Left Behind".
The show has also been nominated for eleven
Annies, and won three times, twice in 2006 and
once in 2008. The show has also been nominated for a
Golden Reel Award four times,
winning once. In 2009, it was nominated for an Emmy for
Outstanding Comedy Series. This
was a significant accomplishment considering that the last animated
program to be nominated was
The
Flintstones in 1961 and that
The Simpsons has never been nominated in
this category.
In the 1000th issue of
Entertainment Weekly, Brian
Griffin was selected as the dog for "The Perfect TV Family."
Wizard Magazine rated
Stewie the 95th greatest villain of all time. British newspaper
The Times rated
Family
Guy as the forty-fifth best American show in 2009. Family Guy
was named the seventh of the top one-hundred animated series by
IGN.
Other media
Family Guy Live!
As promotion for the show, and to, as Newman described, "expand
interest in the show beyond its die hard fans", Fox organized four
Family Guy Live! performances, which featured cast members
reading old episodes aloud; In addition, the cast performed musical
numbers from the
Family Guy
Live in Vegas comedy album. The stage shows were an
extension of a performance by the cast during the 2004
Montreal Comedy Festival. The
Family Guy Live! performances, which took place in Los
Angeles and New York, sold out and were attended by around 1,200
people each.
Video game
Family Guy Video
Game! is a 2006
action game
released by
2K Games and developed by
High Voltage Software. It
appears on the
Xbox and
PlayStation 2 consoles, and the handheld
PlayStation Portable. The
game's story reflects the episodic structure of the series with
adventure game elements. The game received
very mixed reviews, averaging 50% favorable reviews for the
PlayStation 2 version, 51% for the PlayStation Portable version,
and 53% for the Xbox version, according to review aggregator
Metacritic. The game receiving praise for
its humor, but was criticized for its short playtime and
"uninteresting gameplay".
Spin-off
In 2009, a spin-off series titled
The Cleveland Show premiered on Fox.
The Hollywood
Reporter initially announced that there were plans to
produce a
spin-off of
Family
Guy to be focused on Cleveland. MacFarlane, Henry and
American Dad! show runner
Rich Appel created the series. Cleveland
references his spinoff at the end of the episode "
Baby Not On Board". The series premiered
on September 27, 2009. Due to the cancellation of Mike Judge's
King of the Hill, the
American adaptation of
Sit Down, Shut Up
being moved to Saturday nights, and the renewal of
American Dad!,
The Simpsons is now the only cartoon on
Fox's "Animation Domination" line-up that was not created by
Seth MacFarlane. The show, which was
picked up to air a first season consisting of 22 episodes, was
picked up by
Fox for a
second season, consisting of 13 episodes, bringing the total number
to 35 episodes. The announcement was made on May 3, 2009 before the
first season even premiered. Due to strong ratings FOX picked up
the back 9 episodes of season two, making a 22 episode season, and
bringing the total episode count of the show to 44.
Film
On July 22, 2007, in an interview with "The Hollywood
Reporter", MacFarlane announced that he may start working on a
feature film, although "nothing's official." In September 2007,
Ricky Blitt gave
TV.com an interview confirming that he had already
started working on the script. Then in
TV
Week on July 18, 2008, MacFarlane confirmed plans to produce a
theatrically released
Family Guy feature film sometime
"within the next year". He came up with an idea for the story,
"something that you could not do on the show, which [to him] is the
only reason to do a movie." He later went to say he imagines the
film to be "an old-style musical with dialogue" similar to
The Sound of Music,
saying that he would "really be trying to capture, musically, that
feel."
Merchandise
As of 2009, six books have been released about the
Family
Guy universe, all published by
HarperCollins since 2005. The first book based
on
Family Guy,
Family Guy:
Stewie's Guide to World Domination (ISBN 9780060773212) by
Steve Callahan, was released in April 26, 2005. Written in the
style of a
graphic novel, the plot
follows Stewie's plans on ruling the world, despite his only being
a child. Other books include
Family
Guy: It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One (ISBN
9780752875934), which covers the entire events of the episode
"
It Takes a
Village Idiot, and I Married One", and
Family Guy and
Philosophy: A Cure for the Petarded (ISBN 9781405163163), a
collection of seventeen essays exploring the connections between
the series and historical philosophers.
Family Guy has been commercially successful in the home
market. The show was the first to be resurrected because of high
DVD sales. The first volume, covering the show's first two seasons,
sold a total 1.67 million units, topping TV DVD sales in 2003,
while the second volume sold another million units. Both the volume
six and seven DVDs debuted fifth in United States DVD sales; volume
seven was the highest television DVD, selling 171 thousand units by
June 21, 2009.
Family Guy Presents Blue Harvest, the
DVD featuring the
Star Wars special "
Blue Harvest", was released on
January 15, 2008 and premiered at the top of United States DVD
sales. The DVD was the first
Family Guy DVD to include a
digital copy for download on the iPod.
References
External links