Comparing the show’s costs and logistical overhead to “doing an Avengers movie every 22 minutes,” MacFarlane told The Wrap this week that “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.’ So I said, ‘All right, I hear you loud and clear.’”
Although there’s been no formal decision on whether the show would get a third season, MacFarlane points out that he and his writers very deliberately wrote the show’s second-season finale (which aired this week) to serve as a potential series ender, with main character John (Max Burkholder) committing to getting really buff (presumably so that he can be played by Mark Wahlberg in the future Ted movies). “So [showrunners] Brad Walsh and Paul Corrigan and I kind of painted ourselves into a corner,” MacFarlane noted. “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.”
Deadline notes that MacFarlane does have a bit of an out here: He and his team are reportedly already working on a fully animated Ted spin-off, which will presumably get around all those pesky cost overruns by going pure cartoon. (Not that the series will necessarily be cheap, since it reportedly takes place after 2015’s Ted 2, and is set to co-star Wahlberg and Amanda Seyfried—but at least they won’t have to be doing the constant Roger Rabbit-ing that apparently skyrocketed costs on the live-action show.)
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