Fry (Billy West), Leela (Katey Sagal) and, of course, Bender (John DiMaggio) are back in their latest and greatest adventure, Bender's Game. The title represents the third of four made-for-DVD features based on the animated sci-fi TV series Futurama. Available on Nov. 4—Election Day; vote, people!—the Bender's Game DVD finds the Planet Express gang going medieval, features guests that include Rich Little and George Takei and includes such extra features as an interactive Futurama Genetics Laboratory, a (genuinely funny) cast commentary and a "Dungeons & Dragons & Futurama" featurette hosted by David X. Cohen, co-creator and executive producer (with Matt Groening) of Futurama.

SCI FI Weekly recently spoke with Cohen in an interview in which he discussed Bender's Game, previewed the next Futurama adventure and contemplated the future of the franchise.How devastated were you when Fox gave Futurama the ax a few years ago, and did you think at the time that the show was done forever?

Cohen: Starting with Part A, I have to say it was a very slow-moving ax. It was falling for four years, very slowly. So I wouldn't describe it as devastating, but as kind of slow and painful. At the moment it occurred it was not surprising at all, because each of our seasons, basically, we were left hanging for a long time at the end and not really told until the last minute that we were coming back. So we were quite accustomed to having the ax pressing down on our necks by that point. And it was our fourth production season when it dragged on a particularly long time, and we pretty much saw the writing on the wall. We actually had time to get our ducks in a row.And you were able to come up with a series finale. ...

Cohen: It was a last episode that we felt we would be proud to end on if it was indeed the end. That one was called "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings," and it was written by one of our longtime writers, Ken Keeler. It left things on a really sweet note, but also gave us the chance to return if we ever did so. So it wasn't devastation, but almost resignation at that point. We felt we'd survived longer than we'd expected already. And Part B, did we expect to come back? No. Everyone hugged each other and packed up their junk and moved on to other jobs, including me and Matt, and everybody had other things to do. There wasn't a lot of precedent for shows coming back from the grave. When we began to sense some hope was when Family Guy, which had suffered a similar fate, came back with a DVD release and then went on the air. As it turned out, they paved the way for us.What have you been able to do with the movies that you hadn't been able to do with the show?

Cohen: Several things. It was sort of a matter of us coming back in this longer format and thinking, "OK, what can we do to make it more of a feature experience, even though it's going to be on the small screen?" So we decided to do several things technically. We went to widescreen for the first time. We decided to go to high-definition for the first time with Bender's Game, which was released in Blu-ray. The previous two actually exist somewhere in high definition, but they haven't been released yet to the public that way. And lastly, these have surround sound for the first time ever. So we've tried to give them a grander look and sound. Then, as far as the subject matter, we wanted to pick four epic areas of science fiction and hit them in the four different DVD releases. If you go through them in order, the first one was a big, crazy time-travel extravaganza, which is bouncing back and forth and comically complicated in the way that time-travel movies get. The second one was an alien invasion movie with giant tentacles attacking everyone and the population of Earth enslaved by an evil alien, one of dubious morals and played by David Cross.And now there's Bender's Game ...

Cohen: Bender's Game is really our first big foray into fantasy and swords and sorcery, which is an area you would think we would have hit before, because it has such an overlap, I think, in its fan base with Futurama. But we used to be a little bit stricter in terms of the subject matter we would hit. When we started out, it was really just more traditional sci-fi and traveling through the stars and those kinds of things. And we gradually, I think, learned to loosen up and continue that tradition with the DVD movies and allow ourselves to go into some other related areas that we think are interesting. So, early on, we probably wouldn't have permitted ourselves to come up with an excuse to get our characters into a medieval setting. But what we've learned along the way is if it seems like a fun thing to do then we should do it. So we found our excuse, and our characters are in a medieval land of magic and dragons and those kinds of things in the third one. And the fourth one, coming out next spring and called Into the Wild Green Yonder, is a real space opera, spanning a billion years of battle between evil and good, and our characters find themselves caught in the middle of that. So, it's four epic themes representing different aspects of science fiction and fantasy, and the technical specifications to make them look and feel more like movies.Matt Groening is very quick to give you and your team the credit for the success of the show and the movies. ...

Cohen: Matt said credit and not blame?Yes.

Cohen: OK. Then I accept it.From your perspective, what has been Matt's contribution to Futurama?

Cohen: Matt has more things going on than the rest of us, and when this project—the four DVDs—started up, when we were writing these things, Matt was still working on The Simpsons Movie on a daily basis. We're coming up on winter 2008, and it's been a two-year project to get these DVDs done. And so Matt was working on the Simpsons TV show, The Simpsons Movie and the four Futurama DVDs at the same time. He was running all over the place like a madman and going a little bit insane, as was everybody, I think, involved with the movie, because it was a high-pressure thing to get that finished and into theaters on time. I will say, however, that his home base is at his studio, where we worked on Futurama. So we actually may have seen a little more of him than at least the Simpsons TV show at that time. I would say that, as always, he can't be there all the time, but when he is in he is genuinely a big contributor the show, or the DVDs in this case.

It all goes back to his sensibility, ultimately. I think that he often under-credits himself. What happens in interviews generally is the articles tend to over-credit him and he himself tries to under-credit himself. So you'll see stories that suggest that he does everything, that he draws every frame of animation and he practically does the voices and he writes the things. When you talk to him he'll say, "Oh, it's all David Cohen or it's all Al Jean on The Simpsons," or whoever. Matt is the first to give credit and a very modest person, but ultimately these go back to his sensibility and his anti-authority take on things. It's also his sensibility that we try to actually always work in some personal story and have the characters have believable emotions no matter how crazy the situation. He wants people to relate to the characters and their situation no matter what the crazy setting is that we choose, whether it's a medieval land or far in outer space. So I like to give a lot of credit to him. I'm willing to share the credit equally.The next DVD, Into the Wild Green Yonder, is also set to be the last Futurama movie for the moment. Where are things at with the franchise? Could the show come back on a weekly basis? Are you talking to Fox about more DVDs?

Cohen: Hope never dies on Futurama, or not anymore. It died once, but once you introduce the idea that you can come back from the dead, then the second time you have to have a little bit of hope that you might come back to life yet again. So we do retain hope of resurrection. Now, what the chances are, I have no idea. The hard facts would seem to support us coming back again. From what we have heard, the DVDs have sold very well, and I have heard the phrase "greatly exceeded" Twentieth Century Fox's expectations. So that's got to be a good sign, you would think. We haven't heard anything, yes or no, so it's familiar territory. And I'll add that Ken Keeler, who wrote the last episode of the series, also wrote Into the Wild Green Yonder. So we have the rare luxury of a writer who's experienced with writing the last episode of Futurama writing it again. So, in tone, we've gone for a similar approach, where, if it is the last thing we ever do, I think we'll be quite proud of it and it will serve us well as the last episode ever. But we leave ourselves a thin ray of hope in the story and in real life of returning.