Most people not named “Stephen King” seemed to enjoy The Simpsons Movie, which finally brought America’s favorite cartoon family to the big screen — and also launched a war amongst America’s many Springfields.
Although it didn’t win nine Academy Awards and inspire a novelization by Norman Mailer, as the Itchy & Scratchy movie did, when it hit theaters in 2007, The Simpsons Movie was unquestionably a financial success. As Entertainment Weekly reported at the time, on its opening weekend, it “scored the best opening ever for a non-CG animated movie.” The film went on to make more than $536 million at the worldwide box office.
So why did we never get a sequel?
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This question was recently posed to creator Matt Groening at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where he received the Honorary Cristal Award for his contributions to the medium. Per Screen Daily, Groening revealed that the Simpsons team are “always talking” about producing another feature film. But they have yet to make a follow-up because the first one was so grueling to work on.
“The first movie killed us,” Groening explained. “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,” the cartoonist added. “We’ll see.”
Longtime Simpsons director David Silverman, who helmed The Simpsons Movie, similarly argued that it would be tough to make sequel because they “don’t want to take a break (from making the series)” and clearly the previous attempt to do both at the same time wasn’t great for everyone’s mental health. He also pointed out that “we have to get a story that needs to be a movie.”
“The best The Simpsons episodes are structured like little movies anyway,” current showrunner Matt Selman suggested. “So when you see it in the theater, you have to think, why is this big screen worthy?”
Some have argued that, were the Simpsons crew to find a way to make another movie, it wouldn’t be able to match the original’s profits. And that may be true, but it’s still a recognizable and beloved brand that moviegoers would likely turn out for. And if the writers really do decide to wait until after the show has finished before writing a movie, this hypothetical flick could serve as one big grand finale for The Simpsons.
But don’t expect it to be very long. “If we do a movie, I promise you this, it will be the shortest movie we can legally put in theaters and still charge full price,” Selman joked.
Or, instead of a sequel, maybe they should just release the fan-edited McBain movie in theaters instead.
Content shared from www.cracked.com.