“The Simpsons Movie 2” set for release two decades after first film
For millions, the TV show’s golden era has long since passed.
In his silver screen debut back in July 2007, Homer Simpson told audiences: “I can’t believe we’re paying to see something we get on TV for free. If you ask me, everybody in this theater is a giant sucker...”
Now, the world’s most iconic TV cartoon is officially returning for a second movie spin-off — almost exactly 20 years after the original, with a premiere date set for July 2027. (Of course, this time around, frugal fans might be able to wait out the theatrical release for the flick to land on Disney+.)
And, in prophetic “Simpsons” fashion, it seems they’d already predicted the premiere date for the upcoming movie at the start of Season 19, immediately after the first film’s release:
Homercoming
As reported by Variety, the “Simpsons” sequel will take the place of an untitled Marvel installment in Disney’s 20th Century Studios’ slate.
Given the sheer volume of films and their impressive cultural heft, it does feel like the superhero franchise has been around for ages, but the first “Iron Man” movie only premiered in 2008 — one year after “The Simpsons Movie” hit screens, and about 19 years after the first episode of “The Simpsons” aired on TV.
Indeed, the yellow-tinted town of Springfield has been televised since 1989, making “The Simpsons” one of the longest-running TV series of all time. And, in the midst of its 37th season, with nearly 800 episodes to date, it’s still going... albeit with far fewer viewers than in its 1990s heyday.
Inspired by this “Simpsons” deep dive by Todd Schneider from 2016, and using ratings data collated on Wikipedia’s extensive list of the show’s episodes, it appears that viewership has been on a downward trajectory in the US. Only five episodes in the show’s history have topped approximately 30 million viewers — they all aired before 1991.
Some notable outliers could have more to do with timing than being timely: Episode 343, “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass,” which aired directly after Super Bowl XXXIX and starred Tom Brady and LeBron James, had a viewership of ~23 million, more than double the Season 16 average. Episode 451, “Once Upon A Time In Springfield,” meanwhile, followed a heated NFL playoff and saw a 106% viewership bump from the Season 21 average.
“Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.”
While die-hard devotees of the earlier seasons are still lamenting the “Golden Age” of the show, the stark ratings decline may say less about the diminishing popularity of “The Simpsons” than the demise of cable TV more broadly.
Most TV shows don’t even make it to 100 episodes, and any series as prolific as “The Simpsons” would certainly have a chart with a very similar shape to it — we just don’t watch things like we used to. However, that doesn’t negate the fact that “The Simpsons” is also failing to break into the upper echelons of the streaming world.
Since Disney acquired the show’s long-term TV network, 21st Century Fox, in 2019, Disney+ has been the streaming home of “The Simpsons,” featuring episode sets and made-for-streaming specials — and, soon after debuting on the Fox Channel, new episodes of the upcoming season will also be released on the platform. Even so, while rival cartoons “Family Guy,” “South Park,” and “American Dad!” all broke Nielsen’s top 20 most streamed shows for the first half of 2025, the Simpson family was nowhere to be seen.
Still, if linear TV viewership continues slumping into 2027, capitalizing on the growing market for animated family-friendly movies could be a perfectly cromulent way for the franchise to recapture the “Bartmania” seen in decades past.
