Seth MacFarlane explains how finding its new home on Hulu improved The Orville season 3. Set 400 years in the future, The Orville follows the crew of the U.S.S Orville as they explore the mysteries of the universe in episodic adventures inspired by Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. The series was created by MacFarlane, who also directs and stars as Captain Ed Mercer, the commander of the Orville. Adrianne Palicki, Penny Johnson Jerald, Scott Grimes, Peter Macon, Jessica Szohr, J. Lee, Mark Jackson, and Anne Winters also star as Ed's crew on the Orville.
Subtitled New Horizons, The Orville season 3 recently premiered on Hulu to impressively high reviews. New Horizons has come a long way since the show's first season, which generally received negative reviews from critics. Many reviews criticized the show's lack of focus in season 1, although The Orville season 2 seemed to improve on that problem. Now, in contrast, The Orville seems to have found its voice, and New Horizons delivered the series' biggest adventures yet without losing sight of its characters. The other change The Orville season 3 saw from the previous two seasons was its move from Fox to Hulu as its exclusive home.
MacFarlane discusses The Orville's move to Hulu in an interview with Screen Rant. During the discussion, MacFarlane explains how the big change improved New Horizons because Hulu allowed them fewer time restraints. The Orville creator also mentions how impressed he was by Hulu's marketing and promotion for the series' third season. Check out MacFarlane's full comments below:
From a restrictive standpoint, creatively, the biggest issue really was the time constraints. I'm a fan of movies, I'm a fan of classic movies, I'm a fan of film scores, I'm a fan of cinematography. I like it when shows take their time to make me feel something and, oftentimes, that's done through purely visual and musical work on screen. For broadcast networks - through no fault of their own, it's just the way the economic structure has existed for decades - they all kind of start to fall into this similar rhythm. A network drama or a network comedy kind of has the same rhythm to it, no matter what you're watching, because it has to fit into this pocket of exactly 22 minutes or exactly 43 minutes. That certainly was something that I just got weary of after a while. I would sit in editing, and I would have a show that was maybe 51 minutes. It was working great, and I was happy with everything, and I was happy with the moments. Then somehow I had to cut three minutes out of the show - and it's frustrating, because there are scenes in season two that, particularly, should have breathed a little more and they couldn't. Because you had to make room for the fabric softener commercial. From a creative standpoint, this season for Hulu has been immensely more fulfilling for that reason.
As far as an executive standpoint, I certainly got support from Fox when we were on the air. The marketing and promotional campaign that Hulu put together feels like a movie to me, I was shocked, and still am, at how involved that was. We delivered 10 movies, and they promoted them as such, and it was great to see how well thought out that was. But yeah, that was a big difference, really, was a lack of time constraints. And that can have a profound impact on the flavor of the show.
MacFarlane is only one of many TV creators to take advantage of streaming sites' flexibility with runtimes. Both varying and extended episode lengths seem to be a trend among several recently released series. Of course, probably the most well-known example of this trend would be Netflix's Stranger Things season 4, which ended with a staggering 150-minute finale episode. For its part, the longest episode in New Horizons is just short of 90 minutes, allowing MacFarlane and his team to bring the sci-fi series up to the level of that that cinematic scale MacFarlane mentions.
At this moment, The Orville has yet to be renewed, although MacFarlane seems hopeful for a season 4 renewal. The Orville season 3's move to Hulu helped gain the show some of its highest praise yet, so there's a chance that the series' release on Disney+ on August 10 could give it the additional boost it needs to earn The Orville season 4. For now, The Orville is available to stream exclusively on Hulu.