Tuesday, June 21, 2005

"Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane is preparing his long-awaited direct-to-DVD movie based on the exploits of his cartoon clan for a Sept. 27 release.

"It's been an enormous undertaking to juggle this with doing 35 new episodes of the show, but we think it turned out great," MacFarlane said of the film, his first full-length feature, and the first direct-to-video ever made off a television franchise.

The 83-minute, unrated "Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story" ($29.98) is based on the animated series MacFarlane created for Fox Television in the late 1990s. The irreverent series, aimed at adults rather than kids, went on the air in early 1999 and was canceled in 2003, only to be resurrected last month after an overwhelming demand for the show on DVD.

The first DVD set sold more than 2.5 million units ... and two subsequent packages lifted the "Family Guy" franchise's total sales to about 4.5 million units.