Word making its way out of San Diego Comic Con ’09 is that the Futurama panel was a major downer and that none of the cast members who were expected to appear were present. Naturally, this all stems from the current salary dispute between the majorly-talented voice actors and 20th Century Fox, who recently put out a casting call for new voice actors in case no agreement is reached (Read: FOX Hates Your Guts With Every Single Inch Of Their Being; Possibly Looking To Re-Cast “˜Futurama’). It’s being reported by Topless Robot that the only thing that came out of the Comic Con panel, was that show creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen basically just asked that we all cross our fingers and hope for the best, which we’ve all been doing for years now anyway.

Surprisingly, this isn’t all that came out of the Con, though. IGN actually found Bender Bending Rodriguez himself, John DiMaggio, at Comic Con and was able to ask him where things stood. DiMaggio, in his typical outgoing and happy style offered his own personal view of what was going on and what he thought would happen. He even opened with a little song by a man named Elvis.

While this is by no means any reason to celebrate, it is always reassuring to hear that one of the involved is confident that things will get worked out. We at least know that they are still trying to reach an agreement and haven’t officially parted ways.

It sounds to me like eventually, they’re going to find a middle ground and make it happen — we all know this has to happen for the show to work, and EVEN Fox can’t be that stupid. Of course, I’m not putting anything past them until they officially reach an agreement with the cast.