The legendary episode of 'The Simpsons' that almost became their first movie

By the time the second Simpsons movie hits theaters, the series will already be gearing up for its 40th season. And during that time, they have been incredibly lucky that none of their four main voice actors (Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Yeardley Smith, and Nancy Cartwright) have suffered any accidents that would prevent them from continuing to make the show.

In fact, it is highly likely that all four will return for this cinematic sequel, which many hope will be a turning point for the series, perhaps introducing new voice actors: they are all of an age to retire and one doesn’t need a keen ear to notice that their tones are different. The characters have grown and aged because their voice actors have as well. Harry Shearer, who voices Mr. Burns, is already 81 years old! At some point, a turning point has to be made, right?

Game with my peach tree

But perhaps everything would have changed if the first Simpsons movie had come out when they had it in mind, back in 1992. At that time, the yellow family was at the peak of its fame and Bart, who was then the voice of a teenage Generation X, was giving way in the series to the absolute prominence of Homer, who has never left that place since. Then, Fox started to pressure: we need to take advantage because no one knows how long this adventure will last, when will the transition to film happen?

Matt Groening and his writers weren’t quite sure what to do with this request, so they ignored it and moved on until James L. Brooks, the producer, saw one of the last episodes produced in season 3 (which premiered as the first of season 4), Kampamento Krusty, and insisted that the script could be used to make the long-awaited movie. It just needed a few jokes added here and there, and to be stretched a little bit. The regular collaborators of the series didn’t see it as clearly as Brooks, of course.

The reality was that the script didn’t even make it to the usual 22 minutes. In fact, to be able to air it, they had to add verses to the famous song that the kids sing, because they didn’t reach the minimum. And that wasn’t the only problem: they needed the episode to air it as the first of the fourth season or, otherwise, they would have to delay the premiere by a week: “First, if we turn it into a movie, we don’t have a premiere, and second, if we can’t stretch it to 18 minutes, how are we supposed to make 80?”, the then-writer Al Jean told Brooks. And it worked: the idea was immediately dismissed.

Later, The Simpsons tried again with a parody of Fantasia, the Walt Disney movie, but Simpstasia, no matter how excited Groening was about the idea, did not come to fruition. In fact, The Simpsons: The Movie was supposed to have many musical numbers, but they were progressively and sadly eliminated. Another idea was to make a live-action version of the life of Troy McClure, but the death of his voice actor, Phil Hartman, ended that before it even had a script.

We also know that one of the unused scripts for the movie ended up becoming the episode of season 17 “The Manatee’s Bonfire” (which, by the way, is terrible), in addition to exploring the return of Hank Scorpio or a kind of parody of “The Truman Show” (which more or less also ended up on television). As their iconic song said, The Simpsons will never end. The question is, seeing all the terrible fates they managed to skirt in 2007, whether they will still have a grip on the viewers or, deep down, we are all a bit tired of the immortal series.