Seth McFarlane probably creamed his pants when George Lucas gave him the go ahead to do a full one hour episode using Star Wars characters, actually he is probably still creaming his pants over the news. Family Guy will premiere their new season with a Star Wars: A New Hope in September. According to the Daily Variety the Griffin family are at home when they experience a black out and since they can’t watch TV, Peter decides to entertain the family with a story that leads to Star Wars flashbacks. Here is who will be playing what, “family patriarch Peter Griffin will play the role of Han Solo, while mom Lois will appear as Princess Leia. Evil baby Stewie will be Darth Vader, natch. Brian the family dog will serve as Chewbaca, while son Chris is Luke. Robots R2-D2 and C-3PO will be handled by Cleveland and Quagmire, respectively, while creepy old guy Herbert gets the Obi-Wan character. I wonder if Meg will be Jar Jar Binks and Stewie as Darth Vader is perfect.
As you can tell by the 9 clip montage Seth McFarlane and the Family Guy writers are huge fans of the Star Wars series, so I can’t wait to see what they are going to do with it because I bet you it will be brilliant.
I wonder what Seth had to offer up to get Lucas to give him the rights to do this episode… On that note remember when Carol Burnett sued them for copyright infringement because they used a character from her variety show? Well according to Fox News a Federal Judge is close to announcing that he will dismiss the suit against Fox giving Family Guy the win! What a good day for Family Guy and Seth McFarlane!!!
Carol Burnett is suing Family Guy for $2 million for using her image and name without her permission according to Reuters. Burnett says the show committed copyright infringement by using her cartoon likeness from her variety show, The Carol Burnett Show. Burnett says she has exclusive rights to her name and image and the show did ask her to use either. She asked the show to edit her out of the scene and they have declined which is probably why she went ahead with the lawsuit?
A spokesman for 20th Century Fox Television, which produces “Family Guy,” said on Friday the suit was without merit and that references to Burnett and her show in an 18-second sequence of the cartoon amounted to parody. “‘Family Guy,’ like the ‘Carol Burnett Show,’ is famous for its pop culture parodies and satirical jabs at celebrities,” the studio said in a statement. “We are surprised that Ms. Burnett, who has made a career of spoofing others on television, would go so far as to sue ‘Family Guy’ for a simple bit of comedy.”
As a fan of both shows I think I am going to side with Family Guy on this one. You know that expression “what comes around, goes around” well as the spokesperson said she did the same thing all the time 40 years ago so what is the difference now?
BTW you can read the lawsuit at The Smoking Gun for more details.
Up Late with Stewie & Brian premieres this Sunday on MySpace at 6p est. Their first guest will be Rob Corddry, star of Seth MacFarlane’s first non-animated series The Winner, but don’t fear he gets animated for Stewie!
You can watch Up Late on The Winner’s MySpace and if you want you can also watch the pilot episode of the show there too. I so love Seth MacFarlane, so I can’t for all of this!!!
