Simpsons, Family Guy Movies?
Matt Groening, Seth MacFarlane May Bring TV Shows to Silver Screen
Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy and Matt Groening's The Simpsons are the two most popular animated shows on television right now, and the lynchpin of Fox's unstoppable Sunday night television lineup. Both shows have conclusively proven that animation wasn't solely for the Saturday Morning kiddie kartoon krowd (Writer's Note: Yes, that spelling was deliberate, unlike thsi one).
Therefore it's not surprising that both their creators are talking about feature films based on the shows. Considering the popularity of both shows, it's only a matter of time until they happen or, in the case of The Simpsons, happening again.
Seth MacFarlane Talks Family Guy Movie
TV Week's Josef Adalian spoke with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane who, while revealing several spoilers for the upcoming season, confirmed that a movie based on the occasionally controversial TV series is in the cards.
"We do want to do it, and we will do it at some point," MacFarlane says during the interview. "It's time. In the past 6 months, we started seriously talking about it, and my hope is that we'll get it going within the next year. But doing the show is a 7-day-a-week process and finding the time to squeeze in a movie is . . . I don't know how we're going to do it, but we'll figure it out."
When asked what a potential movie is going to be about, MacFarlane says, "I have an idea of what it's going to be. It's definitely something you could not do on the show which, for me, is the only reason to do a movie."
Will The Simpsons Movie 2 Happen?
The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening is also talking about a sequel to last year's The Simpsons Movie, but don't hold your breath. It could take as long as 4 years before a sequel hits mondoplexes.
"(A new Simpsons movie) will happen at some point, but I have no idea when," Groening told a Television Critics Association panel, according to The New York Daily News. "The first one took us four years - mainly because we don't like to work any harder than we usually do."
Of course any sequel will remain a hand-drawn affair, mainly because Groening can't stand CGI animation.
"It's the eyes," he said. "The characters in CGI have human eyes. That's why I like the 2-D animation we use. Our illustrators draw a circle and put a dot in the middle. Now that is an animated eye."
The Simpsons Movie, despite many people feeling it came at least 5 years too late, did very well at the box office, making $526,417,972 worldwide. Given those numbers, Fox would certainly be very happy to see Groening and his gang of gag writers turn their attention to scripting another movie about Springfield's most notorious family.
Fun Fact: How many Suite 101 writers does it take to review The Dark Knight? About 4, which is two less than the number of Suite 101 writers who reviewed WALL-E.
