Posted in: Peacock, TV | Tagged: ted

Ted Creator Seth MacFarlane: "No Plans" for Season 3 Due to High Costs

Ted creator Seth MacFarlane cites the high cost of rendering the CG bear as the primary reason a third season is unlikely to become a reality.

As stretched out as Seth MacFarlane is creatively these days, you should probably take as much as you can get since the actor, creator, and director has been involved in so many projects from balancing his animated empire with Family Guy and American Dad! to his live-action works like Ted, the Liam Neeson-starred Naked Gun legacy sequel, and The Orville, we're barely scratching the surface of his juggling act. One thing's for sure, he's becoming far more aware of his limitations creatively with the often delayed production of the Hulu sci-fi series' ode to Star Trek and now, his Peacock series prequel, which wrapped its second season, facing an uncertain fate. Fans can at least look forward to a Ted animated series, which is slated for Peacock. MacFarlane spoke to The Wrap (via Deadline) about how difficult and unlikely a third season will be.

Ted Creator and Star Seth MacFarlane on the Uphill Climb Season 3 Will Be, Mainly Due to the Budget

"What I kept hearing [from Peacock and Universal] was, 'Listen, the show is really expensive to produce, and there's no way to do it at a lower cost,'" MacFarlane said. "So I said, 'All right, I hear you loud and clear.' So I wrote the last scene with Max [Burkholder] walking into a gym, presumably coming out as Mark Wahlberg in the first Ted film. So [showrunners] Brad Walsh, Paul Corrigan, and I kind of painted ourselves into a corner. Is there a way to do it? There's always a way to do anything. But at the moment, it might take some narrative acrobatics. There's no plan that I've heard of at the moment to do Season 3."

MacFarlane cited costs as the primary factor in preventing season three from becoming a reality. "It's very good that we had two Ted films under our belt, because the workload is something that, on a weekly basis, is just insurmountable," he said. "And it's a testament to our production team, to our DP Jeff Mygatt, to our camera crew, to our visual effects crew and [visual effects supervisor] Blair Clark, and our wonderful crew in Melbourne, Australia, at Framestore that this was able to be achieved on a weekly basis. It's like you're doing an Avengers movie every 22 minutes with the amount of CGI that it takes, not only to animate the bear, but to act the bear. It's something we couldn't have done if we had not had the education of doing two films 10 years earlier."

The franchise originally starred Wahlberg as John Bennett, who made a wish to make his teddy bear come to life, and it functions as a foul-mouthed, anthropomorphic being with MacFarlane providing the voice, in the original 2012 film, whose success spawned a 2015 sequel.

The Peacock prequel series was set in the 1990s, with Burkholder playing the character in high school, and lives with a predominantly traditional family with his quick-tempered conservative father, Matty (Scott Grimes); his soft-spoken, stay-at-home mother, Susan (Alanna Ubach); and his street-smart and outspoken liberal cousin, Blair (Giorgia Whigham). As John faces the rigors of puberty, he often finds himself in awkward situations, but with the worst possible influence in his stoner best friend, Ted, who often gives him overly simplistic and juvenile solutions, the only way Peter Griffin can. Both seasons of Ted are available on Peacock.

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