Having attained the sort of unflinching, honest perspective that can only be afforded by being rich and powerful enough to not particularly care anymore, Seth MacFarlane says he has mixed feelings about the future of his flagship show, currently in its tenth season. “Part of me thinks that Family Guy should have already ended. I think seven seasons is about the right lifespan for a TV series,” MacFarlane tells The Hollywood Reporter, adding, “I talk to the fans and in a way I'm kind of secretly hoping for them to say we're done with it. There are plenty of people who say the show is kind of over the hill … but still the vast majority go pale in the face when I mention the possibility.” So as long as Family Guy fans continue to lose all pigmentation when MacFarlane suggests an endpoint, he’ll continue to keep making them. But were it totally up to him, he says, he’d concentrate on doing “a really fantastic final episode” followed by “a movie once every couple of years.” It’ll be just like Sex And The City, only a little grosser!
Of course, it’s easy to be blasé about your most famous creation when you have two other shows on the same network, plus those previously announced reboots of The Flintstones and Cosmos, another untitled animated series he’s currently planning with Family Guy’s Alex Borstein, various untitled live-action series he’s also planning with various Family Guy writers, the live-action/CGI movie Ted, his big-band album, and now, his probably-won’t-happen-but-you-never-know-with-him dream of rebooting Star Trek on the small screen. But while you’re busy not worrying about Seth MacFarlane, also don’t worry about him once more following in The Simpsons’ footsteps by dragging Family Guy out to the point where it’s having nasty public arguments over money: MacFarlane says he and the voice cast are all close friends, and “they know I have their backs, and I know they're never going to gouge us to an excessive degree. So I don't anticipate us having the standoffs that The Simpsons have had.” Particularly when he could just walk away and concentrate on one of his other dozen projects instead.