Family Guy
| Family Guy | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Seth MacFarlane |
| Developed by | Seth MacFarlane David Zuckerman |
| Showrunners | Seth MacFarlane (1ACX-3ACX) David Zuckerman (1ACX and 2ACX) Daniel Palladino (3ACX) David A. Goodman (4ACX-6ACX) Chris Sheridan (4ACX-6ACX) Mark Hentemann (7ACX-AACX ) Steve Callaghan (7ACX-EACX) Alec Sulkin (BACX-CACX ; FACX-present) Richard Appel (DACX-present) |
| No. of Seasons | 24 |
| No. of Episodes | 446 |
| Original run | January 31, 1999 - February 14, 2002 (original run) May 1, 2005 - present (revival run) |
Family Guy is an American adult animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Originally releasing in 1999, the show would be screwed over by the network and earn a sudden cancellation in 2002. However, thanks to DVD sales and high ratings on [adult swim], the show would receive a second life in the form of a revival that premiere in 2005, with the show continuing to run to this day.
Series Premise[edit | edit source]
Sick, twisted, and politically incorrect, the animated series features the adventures of the Griffin family. Endearingly ignorant Peter and his homemaker wife Lois reside in Quahog, Rhode Island with their three kids. Meg, their eldest, is a social outcast; teenage Chris is awkward and clueless about girls; and the youngest, Stewie, is a genius baby bent on killing his mother and destroying the world. Their talking dog Brian keeps Stewie in check while sipping martinis and sorting through his own life issues.
Production[edit | edit source]
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Development (1997-1998)[edit | edit source]
In 1997,
The pitch was very crude in both animation and voice acting departments. As most of the crew was Seth himself, his sister Rachael MacFarlane, Alex Borstein and his friend Butch Hartman.
May 15 - Seth MacFarlene pitches to FOX a fifteen-minute pitch pilot of Family Guy. FOX ordered 13 episodes of Family Guy to air in midseason after MacFarlane impressed executives with a 14-minute pilot, starting production.
Early years (1998-2000)[edit | edit source]
With production beginning to take off in early summer of 1998, FOX would put out multiple candidate options to help Seth make a show out of Family Guy, upon which David Zuckerman. David would serve as the developer, executive producer and showrunner of the series and assisted Seth in learning the ropes of creating a TV show.
Casting calls began from June and July, with Lois, Meg, Chris and Brian being open for new actors while Peter and Stewie were still casted as Seth. Borstein reobtained the role of Lois, Seth Green won the role of Chris (although Stuart Stone was also a close consideration), Lacey Chabert won the role of Meg (though Cree Summer was initially considered but dropped because Seth felt uncomfortable about an African-American woman playing a white character) and MacFarlane stayed as the voice of Brian when his original voice tape was put in the audition tape batch and was the one chosen.
By the end of December 1998, table reading and initial recording for the first season's fifteen episodes would be done, with pushing the episodes to animatic and taking care of retake revisions being priority.
On January 31st, 1999, Family Guy would premiere it's pilot episode right after Super Bowl XXXIII as a sneak peak, which was watched by 22 million viewers. This high bar set by this led to FOX greenlitting a second season while preparing to have the show premiere as a proper show in March of that year.
With no waste the second season would begin production while the first season would be wrapping production, although some issues on the production side would cause affects on the show's production schedule. For one, Lacey Chabert would step down as the voice of Meg, leaving Meg without a voice actress and the crew unable to record episodes as recording sessions were delayed until the found a replacement, which Mila Kunis won and started recording with the cast in late March. In addition, one of the episodes in production - that would later go on to be banned briefly - had an abysmal table reading and had to be scrapped and undergo heavy revisions, losing one of the production slots for episode and again throwing off production by roughly a month. This, alongside the last minute change to rename two recurring characters just as the color footage was coming in led to last minute redubs that caused the show to be delayed to April.
As the show was wrapping production of its second production season in early 2000, problems would arise when FOX suddenly cancelled the show due to low ratings. Although FOX would give Family Guy one more chance and give a last minute order for a third season of thirteen episodes during the late summer to early fall of that year. The third season saw many changes in it's production and writing staff. As developer and showrunner David Zuckerman would leave the show due to presumed feelings of being worn out (though he would still retain a "developed by" co-credit with MacFarlane on each episode). As such a replacement executive producer and showrunner had to be picked, which went to Daniel Palladino, who joined early into the second season.
Alongside him, other members of staff from the previous two seasons such as Ricky Blitt, Garrett Donovan and Neil Goldman, and Craig Hoffman would leave as well. Nevertheless, the show pushed and from 2000 to 2001 would producer the third season
| Seasons of Family Guy |
|---|
| 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 |
