"Fox has greenlighted ‘Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey,’ a 13-part docu-series from ‘Family Guy’ creator [Seth] MacFarlane and the late [Carl] Sagan’s original collaborators — his widow, writer/producer Ann Druyan, and astrophysicist Steven Soter," writes Nellie Andreeva at Deadline.com.
According to the article, the series will be a sequel to Sagan’s iconic Emmy Award-winning and Peabody Award-winning 1980 miniseries "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage," that aired on PBS.
The article adds, "A self-professed geek, MacFarlane hit it off with Druyan after the two met at a function some time ago. When she shared with him the idea for a new ‘Cosmos’ series, MacFarlane immediately sparked to it and set up a meeting with Peter Rice, entertainment chairman of Fox, where MacFarlane has 3 series on the air, ‘Family Guy,’ ‘The Cleveland Show’ and ‘American Dad.’ That happened about a year ago, and after lengthy negotiations, Fox just closed all deals for the project to go forward."
The story also notes that the National Geographic Channel — which is co-owned by the Fox Cable Networks — will co-produce the new "Cosmos" series and will show an encore of each episode the same night that episode airs on Fox Broadcasting.
While I am glad that they are trying to bring back educational programming- and one that hopefully will help feed the need to pressure our government to continue space exploration- I am scared a bit.
I flashed on animated Stewie and Bryan, doing one of MacFarlane’s standard “Family Guy presents- On the Road to Ceti Alpha V” episodes, when I read this.