Gather your trambopolines and saxamaphones, because The Simpsons are officially heading back to the big screen.
On Monday, 20th Century Studios officially announced that a new The Simpsons movie is in the works, and is scheduled to be released exclusively in theaters on July 23, 2027. The release date was previously held by Disney for an untitled Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, so this swap makes sense given the fact that… they have no movies currently scheduled between December 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday and December 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars.
Plot details and returning cast members are currently unknown at this time, but the announcement did come with a teaser poster reminiscent of the marketing for the first The Simpsons movie, with Homer’s hand reaching for a donut. The tagline is, appropriately, “Homer’s coming back for seconds.”
The Perfect Joke
First things first, I need to acknowledge one part of this movie announcement that is just excellent. The July 2027 release date places the sequel almost exactly twenty years after the first The Simpsons Movie premiered, on July 27, 2007. When The Simpsons returned for its nineteenth season that fall, what was the first sentence that Bart wrote during the show’s opening chalkboard gag? “I will not wait 20 years to make another movie.”
Obviously, Hollywood and the film industry ebbed and flowed a lot since that time, including the Disney-Fox merger that folded The Simpsons into an entirely new media landscape. In recent years, in addition to the usual episodes themselves, there have also been a slew of different shorts or special episodes exclusive to Disney+, either themed around specific holidays or other Disney properties. But there has been chatter from the show’s creative team about making a proper sequel for over a decade at this point, with co-showrunner Al Jean indicating in 2024 that it was still possible, as long as it could be guaranteed that the movie would be released theatrically.
That commitment is great to hear, especially when so many animated projects or even blockbuster movies themselves are basically cast aside to streaming, something that The Simpsons is apparently even going to joke about this season. (It is still a miracle to me that 2022’s The Bob’s Burgers Movie got the theatrical release that it deserved, especially since it was first in the works before becoming a Disney title.)
Even if you aren’t a diehard The Simpsons fan, you can’t deny that the first movie was something of a moment. In addition to the countless gifs and memes from it that still endure to this day, the running joke around “Spider-Pig” (a Spider-Man-themed Krusty Burger mascot who Homer quickly takes a liking to) was everywhere in 2007. I still have the theme song stuck in my head to the day.
This time around, it feels like there’s so much potential with a new The Simpsons movie, especially while the majority of its ensemble voice cast are still able to voice their roles. Could the movie poke fun at Hollywood’s current infatuation with sequels? Could we see the return of the first movie’s villain, Russ Cargill (or Hank Scorpio, who was originally supposed to take his role)? Could this serve as a quasi-series finale for the show itself? We’ll have to wait until 2027 to find out.
(featured image: Fox)
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