Futurama, the fairly brilliant animated brainchild of Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, just won’t stay dead. It held on for five years as a woefully underwatched series on Fox, resurfaced in the form of four not-totally-sucky straight-to-DVD movies, and last month Fox confirmed the show is returning to television six years after it was cancelled. Absolutely unkillable. Unless, of course, you’re one of the suits at Fox. The people who kneecapped Serenity in a matter of weeks can kill anything, and they’ve got plans for Futurama. Specifically, they’re going to recast all the major voices in the series, and they’ve got a lame-ass, self-serving explanation for this genius move:

We love the Futurama voice performers and absolutely wanted to use them, but unfortunately, we could not meet their salary demands…. While replacing these talented actors will be difficult, the show must go on. We are confident that we will find terrific new performers to give voice to Matt and David’s brilliantly subversive characters.”

This might be a hardball negotiating tactic, but it’s never wise to overestimate these guys. Next, they’ll probably replace Groening with Seth MacFarlane and his crack team of animators that make the hacks at Hanna-Barbara look like freakin’ Michelangelo, and we’ll have a version of Futurama that will make fans pray for its death.