Seth MacFarlane's role on Futurama's new DVD release

I wrote a while back that Seth MacFarlane would be lending his considerable talents to the cast and crew of Futurama’s “Into the Wild Green Yonder” special, and now I can give you more information. The DVD dropped today (hurray!) and in a great MovieWeb interview, we find out what Seth contributed:

We have Seth McFarlane, from Family Guy, making a cameo, which I would say I challenge people to figure out he did. You can write this or not, but what he does is we have, for the first time, done a version of the main title theme music with lyrics, with a swinging 60s version of the theme. Seth McFarlane sings it as a certain Rat Packer, who I won’t name. He is unbelievable. He’s a man of too many talents. He makes you feel bad about yourself. He’s an artist, he’s a writer and then he does voices and then he can sing like a professional singer.

That’s from David X. Cohen, the lead producer for Futurama. Simpsons creator Matt Groening also weighed in what he though of Family Guy:

The opening song is sung by Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy and he’s, I feel, sort of my counterpart. He created this amazingly successful animated how on Fox, but I’ve never been over to where they do Family Guy and I went over and visited. I didn’t realize that – I think my job is pretty hard, I feel sorry for myself – but Seth does voices. So not only is he working on the writing and the animation, but he goes into a recording studio, so they have a recording studio set up right there where they do Family Guy, and that’s just brilliant.

Speaking of Matt Groening, he told the New York Post yesterday that Fox actually told him and Seth to “knock off” any kind of rivalry, no matter how good-natured:

“There’s some gentle spoofing of each other, although Fox has told both The Simpsons and Family Guy to knock it off.

“You didn’t have Bonanza making Gunsmoke jokes.”

As we all know, South Park pretty much takes up the slack on making fun of Family Guy. :>)