Seth MacFarlance announced at the San Diego Comic-Con, that The Orville will be moving from Fox to Hulu for its third season. The move renders the show a Hulu exclusive, removing it from a wider audience on network TV.
The move, according to MacFarlane who created and also stars in it, is a result of higher demands in production. “The Orville has been a labor of love for me, and there are two companies which have supported that vision in a big way: 20th Century Fox Television, where I’ve had a deal since the start of my career, and Fox Broadcasting Company, now Fox Entertainment, which has been my broadcast home for over 20 years,” he stated. “But as the show has evolved and become more ambitious production-wise, I determined that I would not be able to deliver episodes until 2020, which would be challenging for the network. So we began to discuss how best to support the third season in a way that worked for the show.”
The Orville is a live-action, one-hour drama set 400 years in the future that follows the U.S.S. Orville, a mid-level exploratory spaceship. MacFarlane also stars in the series along with Adrianne Palicki, Penny Johnson Jerald, Scott Grimes, Peter Macon, J Lee, Mark Jackson, Chad L. Coleman and Jessica Szohr.
The first two seasons of the show are currently available to stream on Hulu, along with other originals such as The Handmaid’s Tail and the recently released reboot of Veronica Mars.