Fox Orders Seth MacFarlane Live-Action Drama

Fox has ordered 13 episodes of an hour-long comedic drama from Seth MacFarlane, best known as the creator of Family Guy. MacFarlane will star and the series, as yet untitled, is being targeted for the 2017-2018 season.

The show is set 300 years in the future and follows the adventures of a motley crew of space explorers. Dana Walden and Gary Newman, chairmen and CEOs, Fox Television Group, described the show as true to MacFarlane’s character, “wickedly subversive.”

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“For almost two decades, we’ve enjoyed an incredible collaboration with our partner and friend Seth MacFarlane,” said the Fox chiefs. “He’s one of the smartest, funniest and most talented people we’ve ever had the pleasure of working with–a great guy who’s also had such an impact on both television and popular culture. Seth has one of the most original voices–in every sense of the word--and we’ve been waiting for him to bring us a project as special as this one.”

The project will be produced by 20th Century Fox Television. Seth MacFarlane wrote the pilot and is executive producer and creator of the series.

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MacFarlane, whose films include the Ted franchise, showed his love of space while exec producing Fox’s documentary series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

“I've wanted to do something like this show ever since I was a kid, and the timing finally feels right,” said MacFarlane. “20th and Fox have been good to me for many years, and of course, Dana and Gary have been fantastic bosses and true pals, so it was a no-brainer to come to them with the project. I think this is gonna be something special."

Michael Malone

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C/Multichannel News, covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot, about what’s new in television, and Series Business, a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy and New York magazine.