Disney finally buys Hulu, which renews Futurama for two more seasons

We have two pieces of Hulu news to deliver today. News the first: After years of sharing Hulu with Comcast/NBCUniversal, Disney will be outright purchasing the streaming service for around $8.6 billion, according to The A.V. Club. News the second: after reviving the long-running animated sci-fi comedy Futurama earlier this year, Hulu has ordered 20 more episodes, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Both Hulu and Futurama have long, winding histories. Hulu began life around 2007, when studios got together and proposed a shared streaming service that would compete with the emergence of Netflix. The idea behind a joint streaming service was so the individual studios wouldn’t all have to build their own, leading to a hopefully complicated tangle of competing services. That idea obviously did not work out.

Anyway, years passed and Disney ended up with a majority share in the company, putting it in the awkward position of completely owning one steaming service — Disney+ — and partially owning another. Now that Disney will be buying out its partner, hopefully it will consider merging Disney+ and Hulu together and saving subscribers the pain of switching between the two.

The twisty histories of Hulu, Futurama, and Futurama on Hulu

The history of Futurama is even more complicated. The show began life in 1999 as a Fox sitcom from the creators of The Simpsons. Fox canceled the show after four beloved but under-watched seasons. Reruns became popular on Adult Swim, so the show was revived in 2007 for a series of direct-to-DVD movies that were later chopped up into half-hour segments and called season 5.

Then, in 2010, Comedy Central brought the show back for another 56 episodes, which aired through 2013. More recently, Hulu brought the series back again. It’s aired 10 new episodes and has another 10 planned for next year.

And now Hulu has ordered another 20 episodes. (I’m saying “episodes” instead of “seasons” because there’s disagreement over whether, post-Fox, each new batch of episodes constitute a season or a half-season. I said it was complicated.)

Overall, this is probably good news on both fronts…as long as Disney chooses to renew The Orville on Hulu:

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