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Return to the start of 'Behind the Bling Blong'

 

Years after At this point, there is unfortunately little hope for a revival of Mission Hill for several reasons.  First, the cast and crew have all moved on to other projects, and despite the show's runs on Cartoon Network and Teletoon it still remains more of a cult hit than anything else.

One enormous hurdle is the show's cost.  During production, Mission Hill cost about $1.2 million dollars per episode.  So it is out of range for the Cartoon Network, who is used to spending about $300,000 per episode for an original series.  "They would not want to spend 1.2 million on one episode when they could buy four episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force," elaborates Bill Oakley.

As well, mainstream networks these days are trying to cut down on a television show's budget; especially with the continuing popularity of reality programming, which is extremely cheap to produce and can produce exceptionally high returns.  So generally, networks are turning away from producing new prime-time animation.

A Mission Hill DVD set remains a possibility; due to the immense success of the Futurama and Family Guy DVDs, which were also under appreciated prime-time animated series.  Currently the rights are held by Warner Bros., but as Bill Oakley explains, "they may not be aware they hold the rights to it."  The show's creators are still trying to convince executives at Warner that a DVD set would be worth the effort.  However they admit no progress has been made at this time.

Despite all the hardships the show has faced, nothing can ever erase the show's accomplishments.  The thirteen episodes that were produced continue to be beloved and analyzed by the show's fans, who even distribute the episodes themselves via bootleg DVDs and VCDs.  Even the show's creators take efforts to reach out to the show's fanbase by releasing via the internet the scripts for the episodes that were not animated, which they consider to be the best episodes of the series.

And on November 9, 2003, Mission Hill returned to the Cartoon Network for another run on the Adult Swim programming block, where fans new and old have another chance to watch the thirteen completed episodes.

"We are extremely proud of Mission Hill," says Oakley.  Oakley continues to receive emails from fans of the show, and he believes that Mission Hill is possibly the one show on television where fans can have direct communication with the people who created it, "because we love it as much if not more than you guys and we feel the people who appreciate it are in the same league as us, and we're a little sad it didn't keep going, and we didn't see the unproduced episodes."

- Ryan, Webmaster of Mission Hill Online

11/01/2003

A huge thank you to Bill Oakley for his extensive contributions to this article, and for helping to teach us that 'Bling' goes with 'Blong'

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