The Simpsons creator Matt Groening says the team behind the series are “always talking” about a second movie, but there are no plans beyond informal discussions.
“The first movie killed us,” said Groening, speaking to Screen at Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where he received an honorary Cristal yesterday. “We don’t have a ‘B team’; we did the movie and continued doing the series at the same time.
“We even had a countdown clock on the wall - we called it The Simpsons death clock – counting down the months, weeks, days, seconds til we had to have the movie finished. And it made us break down.
“So in a perfect world, we would do [another] movie. We’ll see.”
“We don’t want to take a break [from making the series],” added longtime The Simpsons directed David Silverman, who also directed 2007’s The Simpsons Movie, which grossed over $530m worldwide. “We have to get a story that needs to be a movie.”
“The best The Simpsons episodes are structured like little movies anyway, through the three-act structure,” said Matt Selman, who has written for the show since 1997, and has been main showrunner since 2021. “So when you see it in the theatre, you have to think, why is this big screen worthy?”
The trio agreed if they were to return to the feature format, it would not be for a long film (The Simpsons Movie had an 87-minute runtime). “If we do a movie, I promise you this, it will be the shortest movie we can legally put in theatres and still charge full price,” joked Selman.
Ticket joke
Groening revealed the 2007 film originally included the character of Mr. Burns appearing on-screen 10 minutes into the film to inform the audience they could no longer receive a refund for their ticket. The joke was cut due to testing poorly with audiences.
“The lesson we learned in the first movie was audiences don’t like being mocked and shamed for having gone to see the movie,” added Silverman.
Groening, Selman and Silverman took part in a panel discussion yesterday in Annecy, after presenting an exclusive episode from the upcoming 37th season of the show.
Artificial intelligence continues to be a divisive topic in the animation world, with AI-related talks on the schedule of the festival’s Mifa market and protests planned from a coalition of unions, federations and international animation organisations outside the festival’s Bonlieu centre.
“It’s very intriguing,” said Groening. “However, my gut feeling is AI will never have a sense of humour. So I think humans are needed. And I’m curious to see what happens.”
“The production pipeline animation doesn’t fit [with AI],” said Silverman. “There’s no way to actually utilise it. All it will do is confuse things.”
“We want to be the last show to embrace AI, not the first,” joked Selman, who added that The Simpsons writers have a text thread where they share examples of AI errors related to the show. “AI will confidently refer to this episode – that doesn’t exist. It will make up titles, will make up guest stars, and will say actors play people who didn’t.
“I’m not saying it won’t get intelligent, but right now it’s stupid. Artificial disinformation is ridiculous, the amount of nonsense its piping in people’s brains.”
“Well, AI stands for artificial idiocy,” joked Groening.
Season 37 of The Simpsons will air in autumn this year.
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