"The Family Guy" Coming Back!! ~SilverFire

By Kimberly Potts

It's official: Stewie Griffin's plans for world domination shall continue!

Stewie, the animated ankle-biter with the killer vocabulary and the endless string of plots to kill his mom and enslave the human race, will return in all-new episodes of Fox's cult hit cartoon Family Guy, the show's creator, Seth MacFarlane, confirms.

Stewie, along with fellow Griffins Peter (the dad), Lois (the mom), sister Meg, brother Chris and gin-swilling family pooch Brian, is scheduled to hit the tube again in 2005--but exactly where channel surfers will spot the deliciously dysfunctional clan is still up in the air.

MacFarlane told IGN.com that he plans to begin production on new installments in April, but is unsure about whether the episodes will first air on Fox, which originally broadcast the series from 1999-2002, or the Cartoon Network, which has aired the show in repeats since April 2003.

"Cartoon Network will be involved regardless," MacFarlane told IGN.com. "Whether it goes there permanently or winds up on Fox first and then Cartoon Network remains to be seen. So, at the very least it will be on Cartoon Network, which is great, because at the end of the day, that's where we built our biggest fan base. So I'm happy either way."

In November, a Fox spokesperson told E! Online that as many as 35 new Family Guy episodes could start airing on the network in January 2005.

The uncertainty of where Family Guy will land continues the show's erratic history. It premiered, post-Super Bowl in 1999 to 22 million viewers, received rave reviews from critics, was bounced around the weekly schedule by Fox, got canceled in 2002, became one of the all-time bestselling TV shows on DVD last year, added to its fan base, as MacFarlane stated, when it joined Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" lineup last year and, now, is getting an almost unheard of second shot at prime-time success.

MacFarlane indicated that he has several leftover scripts that he will rework into episodes that will make up the fourth season of the show. And he hopes to reassemble much of the show's writing and voiceover talent (in addition to Stewie, MacFarlane himself provides the voices of Peter, Brian and randy neighbor Glen Quagmire), including Seth Green as Chris and That '70s Show star Mila Kunis as Meg.

Other celebs are also lining up to lend their voices to new episodes, joining the likes of Will Ferrell (news), Jay Mohr (news), Candice Bergen (news), Norm Macdonald, Luke Perry (news), Michael McKean (news), Ron Jeremy, Ray Liotta (news), Jimmy Kimmel, Bob Barker, KISS, Regis Philbin (news), Andy Dick (news), Jennifer Love Hewitt (news) and the late Waylon Jennings (news) who guested during the show's first three seasons.

"I told Mila not too long ago that Moby is interested in doing something with the show," MacFarlane told The Daily Princetonian. "People who you wouldn't even think would be fans [are interested]."

The Emmy-winning MacFarlane--he snagged a statue in 2000 for his Stewie voice work--is keeping himself plenty busy. Aside from writing the new scripts, he's currently producing another animated series for Fox, American Dad.

"American Dad is more heavily issue-related, in the same way as All in the Family was," MacFarlane told The Daily Princetonian. "We latch on to a cutting edge issue and build a story around it."

The show, which is expected to hit the air right around the time the new Family Guy episodes debut, also features a talking fish and a live-in alien for the family. MacFarlane said a crossover with the Griffins isn't out of the question for American Dad.

Meanwhile, Rhode Island School of Design grad MacFarlane will make his big-screen directorial debut with the Spyglass comedy Family Union, about a guy who goes home to visit his twisted family every five years. He's also doing voiceover work for American Dad, and there's still the rumor of both a big-screen Family Guy movie at Fox and a straight-to-DVD Family Guy release.

And speaking of straight...the best rumor about the plotline of The Family Guy movie? That, as has been hinted at in many Family Guy episodes, baby Stewie will realize he's gay.

"I sometimes wonder if all women are this difficult," Stewie once said of Lois. "And then I think to myself, 'My God! Wouldn't it be marvelous if I turned out to be a homosexual?'"

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