To be honest, they need to stop making the show altogether. You’ve had your fun, time to go.
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The full quotes:
“The first movie killed us,” said The Simpsons creator Matt Groening began when speaking about The Simpsons Movie potentially getting a follow up. “We don’t have a ‘B team’; we did the movie and continued doing the series at the same time.” They were literally working towards a countdown adding even more onto that stress, “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.” Before then revealing, “So in a perfect world, we would do [another] movie. We’ll see.”
The Simpsons Movie director David Silverman then added, “We don’t want to take a break [from making the series]…We have to get a story that needs to be a movie.” Showrunner Matt Selman also stressed how the show has been changing its formats in recent years too, so it makes crafting a new cinematic story all the tougher to get together, “The best The Simpsons episodes are structured like little movies anyway, through the three-act structure…So when you see it in the theatre, you have to think, why is this big screen worthy?”
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I never get this though. If someones not watching something, why would you want it finished if its got an audience thats enjoying it, making money and keeping people in jobs? Especially on streaming so its not like its taking up a timeslot on FTA.
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It’s no skin off my nose whether they keep making it or not but the quality has dwindled so much that they are clearly phoning it in. No show outside soaps and news are built to go for 35 seasons.
The legacy of the show has been hurt by the drop in quality - that may not matter to them but it’s not going to be lauded the same way as if it finished 20 years ago.
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I can still watch the best seasons it doesn’t impact it if they’re still making new ones. They’re just not for me, but another audience still clearly watches it.
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Oh same - but a bit of pride in the brand might be good from the people making it
It really is the only option.
Ten should just sell the 6pm time slot to Disney+. Ten makes money, Disney+ gets all the ad time to push the streaming service or even sell advertising and we get free Simpsons. Win-win solution imo
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But it’s 2025 not 1989. You’re living in the past.
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Except it doesn’t fill Australian Content Quotas, which news can fill, and would probably at the bare minimum rate the same as 10 News +, if not higher, and wouldn’t cost an extra cent.
This is actually a good idea, but put it on 10comedy at 6pm, 7 nights a week. They could even go with double episodes once Neighbours wraps up.
That’s a very intriguing idea. I don’t think 10 would go for it though. They seem to want local shows in the early evening, at least on the main channel.
Are the rights even available for CFTA here?
Disney have been very protective of their IP and svod, although have gone back down the (select) licencing route post-COVID and since Iger came back, even Netflix.
Seven last aired it when they took back the 20C Fox output from Ten at the start of 2018, first runs would run on 7mate on Wednesdays IIRC in an ‘animation’ line-up with FG and AD, like the old ‘Animation Fixation’ on Ten > Eleven.
Also re-runs eventually on 7flix after they lost Seinfeld, in a x3 back-to-back at 6pm (a nod to the old Ten days too), but vanished around 2021/2022.
I think the last time the network played them was late at night on 7mate near the end of 2023.
Now you see Disney / Fox content pop up across several platforms here: Disney Plus, Seven, 7Plus, Nine, 9Now, Stan, Netflix.
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Sounds like they might be willing to do so for the right price, which I doubt 10 would be willing to pay
E4 in the UK has Simpsons every weeknight, Sky Showcase too, not sure if they had life of programme rights though.
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When did (or has) the Fox output deal expire(d)? Would’ve been early 2024 considering the fact it started in early 2018, meaning it would’ve gone for 6 years. Or did it expire before then and Seven still had Simpsons repeat rights (possibly for that season in particular, which was S32)?
Channel 4 definitely does. Sky lost the first run rights recently so I suspect they don’t, but I’m not sure.
They still air random episodes from early days to recent seasons though
Yeah Sky still has repeat rights, and probably will for another few years at least. It seems to have stopped in the last couple of weeks but for a while, E4 and Sky often aired The Simpsons at the same time, though they each have rights to different seasons. E4 in particular has been showing something like 6 or 7 episodes a day.
TVNZ2 have just picked up rerun rights of the Simpsons again after a couple of years absence off screens so seems Disney’s stance is softening (although they still have first run)
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Are they mastered as the original 4:3 aspect and just up-converted, as Ten and later Eleven used (and were still heavily edited to G for many of them)?
Or are these those newer restorations from Disney (for Disney Plus launch) which are horribly cropped/stretched to 16:9 and HD, which Seven used?
Definitely, given this too:
Where you never saw their content outside of Disney Plus for a few years, except on Seven and Ten.
Stan’s was terminated/expired at the end of 2019 strategically, as was Foxtel’s. And unsure if Disney and Fox content was on other paid streamers prior to 2020, such as Netflix and Prime?
Although noting svod, bvod, tvod, fta broadcast and pay tv are all different windowing.