It’s an astounding number to all of us, executive producer Al Jean said during a conference call with the press. Jean, who was part of the original writing staff on The Simpsons, has served as showrunner since 2001.
What it means is, whatever happens, if anything goes wrong, it’s your fault, he joked.
I think this upcoming season is one of our best ever, he said.
There are some extremely ambitious episodes toward the end of the year that are unlike anything we've done before.
Season 25 premieres Sunday with an episode called “Homerland.” Fans of a certain Showtime drama can pretty much figure out what the episode will be about.
It was an idea pitched by one of our writers, Stephanie Gillis, Jean said.
The fact that Homer works at a nuclear power plant lends itself to him being somebody who could be turned by nefarious forces to do something terrible. And there’s the fact that you just add an ‘r’ to Homeland and you get ‘Homerland.’ Coincidentally, 'Homerland' will air the same night as the premiere of the third season of 'Homeland.'
And this year, the opening for The Simpsons‘ annual Halloween tradition, the “Treehouse of Horror” episode, is in the hands of horror master Guillermo del Toro.
It was amazing, what he did, Jean said of del Toro’s work on the episode, airing Oct. 6.
I’ve met some people who like scary things, but he’s the greatest expert on horror movies that I’ve ever encountered. There are so many references in that opening that he put in. It’s really brilliant.
He also commented on the crossover episode with Futurama.
I’ve been here for 25 years and we had a read for [the Futurama episode] yesterday where the excitement was as high as I’ve ever seen, he said. We had John DiMaggio and Billy West and Maurice LaMarche from Futurama, and we had our cast. I thought, ‘This has got to be the best voice-over talent at one read that I could ever think of.’ It was really great seeing Bender interact with Homer. I can’t wait to see that episode.
Jean was also asked one of the most asked questions to Simpsons producers. "Will there be a second Simpsons Movie?"
The really honest answer is, we talk about it from time to time. We say we’d like to do one, Jean said of making a second Simpsons movie.
But I will say there’s a unanimous feeling that nobody wants to do a bad movie or a movie that looks like it’s for the money, or anything that doesn’t have the attention that the first movie got lavished on it. If we come out with one, it won’t be for a while, and it will only be because everyone working on it would say, ‘This is a great movie. We want to do this.’
Apparently The Simpsons has some great plans for upcoming episodes. We have a Homeland parody, a Futurama crossover, another Treehouse of Horror, and even an episode where Comic Book Guy gets married, with none other than Stan Lee presiding over the ceremony. Do you still watch Simpsons? Will you be watching the upcoming Season? Sound of below!
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