The fans have spoken, and we love ‘The Orville,’ but Seth MacFarlane feels that it would have beamed with viewers much quicker with different marketing. As the show’s creator, MacFarlane felt that the pitch to audiences for the first season was entirely off, but even with this, he loves how the trailer for the second season has handled it.
Marketing for the series had initially been some of the more crude jokes which you would have found on MacFarlane’s ‘Family Guy,’ but the series was never about that. In fact, it was a love letter to ‘Star Trek’ from Day 1, and the concept had always been to be a modernized take on the series.
It worked, only, it took some fans awhile to catch up with how the initial trailers made the series look.
Here is what MacFarlane had to say:
“Initially, I think the show was a little misrepresented in Season 1. It was marketed as a comedy, a hard comedy. I’m not sure why. I think there was a little bit of worry that this was so new and weird and different that it wouldn’t land if it wasn’t put into a box. It wasn’t necessarily representative of the show. The nice thing is that the fans stuck with it and saw what we were, the tonal balance that we were riding and they embraced it.”
I’m going to straight up say that I agree with MacFarlane’s assessment of the marketing. I didn’t start watching until about 4-5 episodes in for this very reason as I felt it looked to be more of a comedy in space and I wasn’t sold on the idea. Yes, there is humor in the show but anyone who has seen an episode knows that isn’t the focus.
As for the second season trailer? The creator is on board with how they represent the series now as:
“The show was always intended to be what it is now. I’ll start this by saying that I think the work that the marketing team at Fox did on the season is stellar. They just did a knockout job with [the Season 2] trailer.”
Do you agree with Seth MacFarlane that the marketing for the first season of ‘The Orville’ wasn’t enticing to fans? Was the second season trailer which was revealed at San Diego Comic-Con 2018 a better representation of the series? Share your thoughts below!
‘The Orville’ will be flying back to Fox on December 30th, 2018!
Source: TV Guide
