I wonder if there is a family in media who has persisted so much as The Simpsons. As long as some of our parents have been married, our family has been strong. Time hasn't been kind to the show, whose 34th season is expected to air in a couple of months. Time has proven how long this show will last in the case of its first theatrical film. The Simpsons Movie was released in July of 2007, and is a film that the show's creators have been working on for a long time. The script was written by 11 writers, all of them Simpsons vets, including creator Matt Groening, and co- creators of cult classic cartoon The Critic. The idea to make a theatrical film was considered early on in the show. A live-action flick based on the late Phil Hartman was one of the many ideas considered back then. The season four episode "Kamp Krusty" was an attempt to become a film, but it didn't work out. The show's voice cast signed on in 2001 after 20th Century Fox greenlit the film. The staff was hired so that both the film and the series could be worked on side by side. The idea of The Simpsons becoming a movie was a big deal for people who weren't alive or watching the show. The biggest animated series to make the jump to film was based on it. 2002's Powerpuff Girls Movie was a flop, while 2004's Spongebob Squarepants Movie was a huge hit. The Simpsons Movie is the second highest grossing animated film to use traditional animation after Disney's The Lion King. The one person who likes it The film won a few awards, including Best Comedy at the British Comedy Awards and Best Animation at the ITV National Movie Awards. The reviews that liked the movie praised it for being a standard episode with a bigger budget and longer run time.
It wouldn't be wrong to think of getting a theatrical film as an end goal for western cartoons. Japanese animation can get bumped up to a theatrical film if it chooses. It is still a significant hurdle that not many cartoons in the west have been able to achieve. Surely, all of us have a cartoon that we would love to see on a silver screen, so we could see it in a theater with our friends and fellow fans. The toons that have made the jump to film have typically done so via streaming or straight to DVD affairs, and though those films can be pretty charming and fun in their own right, getting bumped up to theatersmeans something substantial.
The Simpsons movie is unique. It was an appeal for both children and adults back in the day. When Bob's Burgers came out a few months ago, I liked it, but it is a niche show compared to the Simpsons. It will probably be the only cartoon to be like this again. It's true for Fox's cartoons, it seems doubtful that King of the Hill will get to the point of a movie, and Family Guy has too much cultural baggage behind it for a hypothetical movie to garner anything more than an "Alright"
The kind of spectacle and fun that can only be done if allowed to break that show's original half-hour runtime is what movies based on TV shows can deliver. The Simpsons Movie is a victory lap for a brand that has never been defeated before. In 2007, this film was too much of a cultural fixture to be considered a bomb, and is still so today. It was just a matter of when a movie would be made. If Fox and Groening weren't so determined to make it happen, Disney wouldn't have been able to do it.
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