How The Futurama Reboot Planned To Replace John DiMaggio's Bender
Voice actor John DiMaggio reveals how the upcoming Futurama reboot planned to replace him as Bender had he not resolved his contract dispute.
Bender voice actor John DiMaggio reveals how the Futurama reboot planned to replace him. DiMaggio began voicing the alcohol-swilling kleptomaniac bending unit Bender when the Matt Groening-created Futurama first premiered on Fox in 1999. And he would remain part of the cast until Futurama season 7 aired on Comedy Central beginning in 2012.
Futurama season 7 unfortunately appeared to be the end of the road for Bender and the whole Planet Express gang after Comedy Central announced they would not be picking the show up for future seasons. But Futurama fans finally had reason to rejoice when, earlier in 2022, it was revealed that Hulu planned to revive the beloved sci-fi animated series. Unfortunately fan happiness soon turned to fan anger as it was later reported that DiMaggio would not be back as the voice of Bender due to a contract dispute. Thankfully however, this dispute was soon resolved and in March it was officially announced that Bender would again be voiced by DiMaggio.
Hulu and DiMaggio’s brief contract standoff indeed was a topic of discussion when the Bender voice actor appeared recently at Fan Fusion. As reported by /Film, DiMaggio touched on his compensation for the Futurama reboot, revealing that he in fact isn’t being paid more money after resolution of his dispute. DiMaggio also gave some details about how Hulu intended to replace him as Bender in the new Futurama, saying the show was "planning on using guest stars, [and] they were going to replace Bender's voice each episode.” /Film reports that this revelation was met with groans from the audience.
It’s indeed easy enough to imagine the Futurama reboot concocting a scenario where the robot Bender was given a new voice program each week, all as a pretext for this parade of guest stars to take on voicing duties. Of course it’s not known who these “guest stars” would have been, but presumably the show would have made some effort to get famous people onboard to voice Bender, in hopes that the novelty of this might lessen the blow of not having DiMaggio. Whether such a ploy would have actually succeeded in distracting Futurama fans from their annoyance over DiMaggio’s absence is of course another question.
On the one hand, it might have been entertaining to hear an array of different voice actors – some of them presumably famous – giving their take on Futurama’s iconic robot character. On the other hand, DiMaggio is so identified with Bender that it’s hard to really imagine anyone else succeeding in bringing the character to life the way he did over the show’s first seven seasons. Ultimately, it’s a good thing that DiMaggio was convinced to return for Hulu’s Futurama revival, even if he didn’t end up getting paid as much as he might have liked. It’s indeed arguable that going ahead with Futurama without DiMaggio as Bender would be totally pointless.
More: Futurama's Revival Proves How Brilliant Its Last Ending Was
Source: /Film
