"I wouldn't try to climb Mount Everest. I wouldn't want to die. But in entertainment, there's an appeal to things that are a little bit intimidating. Generally, I feel like those are the things that pay off in the end," says MacFarlane (photographed Sept. 8 on the Fox lot in Century City).

The planned update, picked up straight to series in May, was scheduled to launch next year.

Fox has put its planned reboot of The Flintstones on hold.

The animated project from Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane will be delayed, with no word on when production will resume, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

With new Mid-Wilshire offices for Fox's animation unit, where the production is in the midst of staffing up and hiring writers and producers, the project has been put on hold to accommodate multhyphenate MacFarlane's busy schedule.

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In addition to the Flintstones reboot, which the network picked up straight to series in May, MacFarlane's multibillion-dollar empire includes work on Family Guy, American Dad! and Family Guy spinoff The Cleveland Show.

The showrunner -- and newly minted two-time Grammy-nominated musician -- also is hard at work on Fox's Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, a 13-part docuseries designed to be a successor to Carl Sagan's 1980s PBS series. Fox picked up the project straight to series in August.

Flintstones has been a passion project for MacFarlane, who noted that Fred Flintstone was one of the first things he drew at age 2. The project will be jointly produced by 20th Television and Warner Bros. Television, which owns the rights to the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Dan Palladino (Gilmore Girls) and Kara Vallo (Family Guy) will exec produce along with MacFarlane.

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MacFarlane told The Hollywood Reporter in October that there isn't a tremendous amount of material in The Flintstones that needs refurbishing, outside of such things as the characters' devices, which he suggests were prehistoric versions of 1960s technology in the original version. (Expect iPads in the MacFarlane version.)

"Fred skipping out on the opera to go to the lodge is something that probably would need to be a little fresher in 2011," he said at the time.

In addition to his numerous TV projects, MacFarlane is in post on his feature directorial film Ted, due July 13. MacFarlane wrote, produced and voices a character in the live-action/CG film.

E-mail: Lesley.Goldberg@thr.com; Twitter: @Snoodit