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Someone had to start this thread sooner or later. I'm pretty excited and feel that it could potentially be a really good movie. But then I am a die hard Simpsons fan so I tend to always give the show the benefit of the doubt.

And here a story from Daily Variety.



Homer going to bat in '07

Twentieth Century Fox will formally announce today that its long-awaited "The Simpsons" feature will open worldwide in theaters on July 27, 2007.

It's the official confirmation since the reveal was done over the weekend with rule-breaking behavior worthy of serial prankster Bart Simpson.

The first step was a promo during Fox's "American Idol" broadcast on Wednesday when animated Springfield newsman Kent Brockman announced that long-awaited news would be revealed on Sunday's broadcast of "The Simpsons." Fox then introduced a 20-second teaser trailer Friday on prints of "Ice Age: The Meltdown," panning away from a tight shot of Superman's "S" logo to show the symbol on a three-sizes-too-tight T-shirt worn by Homer Simpson, who was otherwise clad in his underwear. The release date was flashed.

Within hours of the film's opening, Web sites like Ain't It Cool News were dotted with sighting reports, and Web wonks tempered enthusiasm with skepticism, thinking the trailer might be an April Fools' Day joke.

It's no prank.

"That trailer is running on 7,000 screens this weekend, committing us to opening every place in the world on the same date," executive producer James L. Brooks told Daily Variety Friday. "Which means, we'd better get started."

Brooks and his co-conspirators are in the storyboarding stage following two years of script drafts and three covert cast readings. Though news of the movie became known when a feature option was made part of contract renewals for show regulars in 2001, the script and release strategy were successfully cloaked in secrecy by Brooks and Fox Animation president Chris Meledandri.

"We've taken script security to the point of lunacy, though it helped that we wrote it in Aramaic," quipped Mike Scully, who penned the script with creator Matt Groening, Brooks and series vets Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder and Jon Vitti.

David Silverman, the "Simpsons" supervising animation director who co-helmed 2001's "Monsters, Inc.," is set as director.

Deals are done with show regulars Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Pamela Hayden and Tress MacNeille.

"We've also set Albert Brooks, Minnie Driver and the real Erin Brockovich, so you should be able to deduce the plot just from that information," said Jean, who is running the show in its 17th season.

The original intention, said Groening, was to delay the film until the show was done.

"We tried to save this until the end of the series, but that intention was undone by good ratings," said Groening. Last month, Fox committed to two more seasons of the show.

"The movie has been so daunting, and the contract between us has always been to wait until we all felt the script was right," Brooks said. "We tell a feature-length movie story with each episode, but we feel we now have a story and script worthy of a movie. And there was so much secrecy that it's actually a relief to be able to speak about it now."

Brooks is producing with Groening, Jean, Scully and Richard Sakai

If the writing for the movie is anything like it has been for the show for the past few years, this movie will be disapointing to terrible. Having celebrity voices doesn't necessarily translate to success and especially lately, the Simpsons use of these voices have been particularly bad. The straight-to-DVD Family Guy movie barely worked, and even that was really just three seperate episodes strung together with transition scenes.

If the writing for the movie is anything like it has been for the show for the past few years, this movie will be disapointing to terrible.

I don't know if that's necessarily a given, since they're bringing back writers like Mike Reiss and David Mirkin who worked on the show during its glory days (seasons 3-7 by my reckoning, although your mileage may vary) and haven't been involved with it for years. Silverman himself left after the 138th Episode Spectacular.

Maybe they'll do it like one of those Looney Toons movies where its just several episodes strung together by some weak-ass device like they did with The Loony Lonny Loony Bugs Bunny Movie and Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island.

Antoine Doinel wrote:If the writing for the movie is anything like it has been for the show for the past few years, this movie will be disapointing to terrible. Having celebrity voices doesn't necessarily translate to success and especially lately, the Simpsons use of these voices have been particularly bad. The straight-to-DVD Family Guy movie barely worked, and even that was really just three seperate episodes strung together with transition scenes.

It's a shame too, that they didn't fight to bow out gracefully. I swear, the first approx 6 yrs of SIMPSONS were some of the funniest prime time ever. A good Good Housekeeping Seal Of Approval for the most hilarious SIMPSONS is Produced by Conan O Brien. I always found that those that fell within the time period of his tenure as a producer were just suffocatingly FLAMING MO funny.

"MMMo. MMMo. MMMo."

"Hey Homuh. Hey Homuh.."(Daisy heads)

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote: (seasons 3-7 by my reckoning, .

Bullseye. I shoulda pointed out that it took a couple years for the characters to find themselves.

I haven't watched The Simpsons regularly since Fox started broadcasting the NFL (scheduling conflicts, etc.), but every time I make a point to watch a new episode I see nothing to bring me back. Its gotta be a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth (because I understand that the credits run through about a third of an episode now) and the show now being about 5 minutes shorter than it used to be-- I imagine its really difficult to tell a Simpsons-scale story in 19 minutes.

Be that as it may, I hope the film heralds an overdue end to this fantastic, groundbreaking series that used to be as smart as they come.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that seasons 3 through about 9 include some of the most perfect examples of television ever. At its peak, THE SIMPSONS revealed more about America and Americans than a thousand newspaper editiorials put together, and was spine-shatteringly funny to boot. Its glory days are long gone, but I still hold out some hope that the movie will work.

Will Conan O'Brien be involved in writing the movie?

He does owe them a couple of scripts...

It was a quality show from seasons 1-8 (even the crude, early seasons were hysterical in their time), but with season 9, there was a huge drop-off in quality.

Even if past writers and showrunners are coming back, I have doubts this will be any good. Al Jean came back, David Silverman has remained involved to some extent, but the show has only gotten worse. After three abysmal years of watching a new episode without laughing once, I finally gave up. In the past two years, I saw only one new episode while visiting a friend, the one where it's a story within a story, within a story, etc. (a gag that isn't very original...even SNL made a lame sketch on the same concept). It was f---ng awful, it only reinforced my determination to quit this show altogether.

The teaser doesn't offer much hope. "I forgot what to say!" Wow, another example of how dumb Homer's become. And what's that? The writers haven't finished the movie yet! Real funny. And what about that opening that's supposed to throw you off? Yeah, it's only the 1000th movie teaser to do that. Imagine what the actual movie will be like. Lazy film parodies are a sure bet, it's so much easier than writing real jokes.

I love how the staff trashes everyone from George Lucas to "The Family Guy" but when it comes to their own work, they can't take the heat. Even Harry Shearer's criticized the show, but nothing's changed. Well, getting worse is change, but not the kind you want.

Part of the reasoning for the Incredibles parody has to do with most of the past season's directors moving onto Pixar (bigger & better & etc.). I can't believe I'm defending a teaser (not even a trailer), but there you go. Boo fucking hoo.

pianocrash wrote:Part of the reasoning for the Incredibles parody has to do with most of the past season's directors moving onto Pixar (bigger & better & etc.). I can't believe I'm defending a teaser (not even a trailer), but there you go. Boo fucking hoo.

It was a Superman parody wasn't it?[/b]

Antoine Doinel wrote: It was a Superman parody wasn't it?

Yes, it was.

There is a glimmer of hope: supposedly, the movie has been worked on since the 3rd, 4th or 5th season (I forgot which). Granted, efforts weren't that serious...saying they've been working on it for 10+ years is like saying Brian Wilson worked on SMiLE for 30+ years. But, it does offer hope that some work was done during their creative peak.

Hans Zimmer has been tapped to score the movie (scroll down): http://www.filmmusic.com/news/article/?id=747

From The Onion A.V. Club:

Beyond "D'oh!": Simpsons Quotes For Everyday Use
http://www.avclub.com/content/node/47756

The site also has an interview with Groening.

From the San Diego Comicon (from which there was much joyous and just plain weird film news this year) are two animatic clips from the forthcoming Simpsons movie:

http://www.simpsonschannel.com/

I think those two clips deserve a hearty: meh.

I actually got my hopes up a little about this one when I heard news about it. Those two clips pretty much crushed any hope I had.

Thanks for the link, Schkura. Call me crazy, but I think the two animatics are pretty promising. The scale has been upped and expanded, plus I chuckled quite a bit. If anything, my hope that this movie may end up as the greatest cultural artifact of Western civilization remains unabated.

The TV show, on the other hand, should have been mercifully put down years ago.

Orphic Lycidas wrote:Call me crazy, but I think the two animatics are pretty promising.

You're crazy.

New trailer

I'm on the fence with this. I really want it to be great, but I have a feeling it will be pretty cruddy.

I expect the equivalent of a mediocre three-part episode. Of course mediocre Simpsons is still better than 90% of what's on television (or in the theater for that matter). It looks like it's going to be 2.35, which should be interesting.

Last night's episode was funny I have to say, especially having dealt with army recruiters myself a couple of times.