With at least 34 seasons guaranteed, The Simpsons already stands as one of the longest-running and most successful television shows in history, and there’s no end in sight to the animated series just yet. First conceived as a series of animated shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show, the cartoon branched off into its own half-hour comedy on Fox in 1989. More than three decades later, it remains one of the network’s most popular programs, which has kept it on the air throughout.
No matter when The Simpsons calls it quits at this point, it will always be hailed as one of the all-time greats. Even so, there are still no plans to stop this train anytime soon, as producer and showrunner Al Jean sees the show going beyond its current deal taking it through season 34. Here’s what Jean recently told Comicbook.com when asked if there had been any talks at Fox about ending The Simpsons with a certain number of seasons in mind.
“It’s never been about the round number. Every pickup is a two-year pickup, because it’s really hard for animation to do pickups yearly, so we’re going through season 34, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if we went through season 36, so then 38. There’s a number of factors that’ll impact the decision, but so far, it’s all systems go.”
In other words, there do not seem to be any plans from within The Simpsons’ team to wrap it up within the next few years. Even so, as Jean points out, it’s not entirely up to them. If Fox execs decide for whatever reason to pull the plug after this current deal ends, or after season 38 or beyond as Jean has suggested, that will be it for the show. Because The Simpsons remains popular with its fan base, however, it’s fair for Jean to remain optimistic about the future.
The relationship between the series and its owners at Disney has resulted in some fun crossover content at Disney+. For Disney+ Day, this included a new short to celebrate the streamer’s “Plusaversary.” Al Jean says there are still many other titles he’d love the show to spoof as we move forward, so we could end up seeing a lot more of those special shorts as well.
“I look at the Disney+ tiles, Marvel and Star Wars, then there’s Pixar-Disney and Nat Geo. We actually wrote, before this all happened, we had written a Free Solo parody, but we were not necessarily going to shoot it now because Free Solo is a little bit of a 2019 thing. I would love to do Pixar and I would love to do Nat Geo and I would love to do the Disney classics. I mean, those are the ones that just are etched in my memory. So yeah, I’m very interested in doing all of them.”
Fans can watch classic episodes of The Simpsons on Disney+ while new episodes premiere Sunday nights on Fox. Time will tell how long the series ultimately runs. This news comes to us from Comicbook.com.
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