It’s a busy day for Fox as they do their upfronts for the 2011-2012 season, but an intriguing new piece of information has slide through this afternoon via Deadline. After years of legal wrangling and a whole lot of things to be dealt with in terms of how it will be written, Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy fame has managed to get the go-ahead to reaboot The Flintstones for primetime TV. The series, which has no start date at this point, will air on Fox with Warner Bros. behind it as they own the rights after they absorbed Hana-Barbera years ago. According to the piece, the “family sitcom’s rightholders were somewhat concerned how the classic series would be interpreted given MacFarlane’s brand of raunchy comedies like The Family Guy.”
MacFarlane is most known for that series of course, but he’s also done voice work for numerous shows and created both American Dad! and Family Guy spinoff series The Cleveland Show. Fox has had strong ratings for awhile with its big block of animation on Sundays and is looking to expand into the Saturday evening market as well, potentially as an eventual challenger to the Adult Swim block as well.
