We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but The Simpsons Movie came out 15 years ago now. We know, we know – sorry! Now that it’s been so long, it’s maybe high time we got another animated movie from Springfield’s most famous family. According to the creative team, a sequel could happen.
Al Jean, current showrunner on the animated series, spoke to Yahoo! about plans for the future. Currently, the big question isn’t when, but for what medium. “I’d love to work on another Simpsons movie, and we’ve talked about it,” he says. “I don’t know exactly what the animation feature world is at the moment. I know there are some movies that have done well, but is it streaming, is it theatrical?”
This was on the back of a new The Simpsons short that’s available exclusively on Disney Plus. Jean has a point on current release models. Disney has favoured streaming releases for Pixar movies and other projects, only pushing certain productions to the big screen. It’s not unlikely The Simpsons Movie 2 would be used to drive subscribers on the platform.
The new Predator movie, Prey, was a streaming exclusive too. Even something massive like The Simpsons might not be considered a box office asset.
“I think that’s actually a question we would have to wrestle with before we even started working on a script,” Jean explains. “What do we want to do, and right now, I’m really happy to work on these shorts.”
The Simpsons Disney Plus short ‘Welcome to the Club’ is part of an ongoing slate for the comedy series. Others have had Billie Eilish and crossovers with popular Disney movies. From Jean’s words, it sounds like they’re creatively fulfilling for the time-being, removing the need for the animation team to tackle something feature-length.
But that’s now, who knows what the future holds. You can find every episode of The Simpsons, and the first comedy movie, on Disney Plus.