How Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane felt about the show’s cancellation

Seth MacFarlane, star and creator of Family Guy, believes the series has reached such a standstill that there is no real reason to cancel it. Until people get bored of “Family Guy” He’ll be on the air, MacFarlane said, and they haven’t gotten tired of the Griffin family in the 25 years since the show debuted. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in 2024McFarlane explained:

“At this point, I don’t see a good reason to stop. People still love it. It makes people happy and funds some good causes. It’s a lot of money that you can donate to the Rainforest Trust and still have a go at it. I went out to dinner that night, where I thought it was time to call it a day, at which point we reached escape speed.

He loves One of MacFarlane’s main inspirations, “The Simpsons”, The animated sitcom “Family Guy” has been around so long (and maintained its cast/crew with such regular jobs) that it’s past the point where it could get a worthy grand finale. MacFarlane’s vision of the never-ending “Family Guy” has been hilarious ever since the show He has I faced cancellation – twice, even.

Family Guy was briefly canceled in May 2000 after its second seasondue to competitive time slots that made it difficult for the show to post quality ratings. It then received a quick postponement for the 22-episode third season, which aired from 2001 to 2002. The controversial third season finale, “When You Wish It Was Weinstein” It debuted on DVD in 2003.) “Family Guy” once again appeared to end after Season 3, but strong DVD sales and popular reruns on Adult Swim convinced Fox to revive it. As MacFarlane pointed out to the Los Angeles Times, this happened because his deal with Fox was still in place, and the network actually renewed that deal to renew Family Guy. In May 2005, the fourth season of Family Guy premiered, and since then, the show has been releasing new episodes.

How did MacFarlane feel about his first show when it happened? In the aforementioned Los Angeles Times interview, he admitted that he had “nothing to compare it to” and said, “This was the first show I’d ever done, and it got picked up. And I thought, ‘Oh, I guess this is normal.’ Which was definitely not the case. When my subscription was cancelled, I thought to myself: “Well, I guess that’s normal too.” But it wasn’t like they were kicking you to the curb, it was like they still wanted to work with you.”

Little did MacFarlane and Fox know that they would soon be returning to the work of “Family Guy.”