To many American moviegoers, the once-thriving superhero genre has become an exercise in joyless repetition as the glory days that Disney is desperately trying to emulate slide further and further into the rearview. Thankfully, The Simpsons is here to show the Marvel Cinematic Universe how to really draw out a franchise decline.
It’s official: in 2027, twenty years after Homer Simpson saved the town that he, himself, nearly doomed, The Simpsons will return to the big screen with The Simpsons Movie 2, as Disney announced yesterday afternoon. While few details are yet known about the second feature film installment of the iconic comedy franchise first launched by Matt Groening back in the 1980s, Simpsons fans do have one concrete piece of information about the surprising sequel – the premiere date. The Simpsons Movie 2 is scheduled to hit theaters on July 23, 2027, an opening weekend that is equal parts distant and hilariously precise, considering that we didn’t even know that the movie was coming about 36 hours ago.
Critically, the second Simpsons Movie wasn’t Disney’s original choice to fill that slot in the release schedule nearly two years from now. Originally, Disney had yet another Marvel movie slated to premiere on July 23, 2027, but The Mouse has made the executive decision to scrap whichever superhero project they planned to release in between the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and its sequel Avengers: Secret Wars and replace it with The Simpsons.
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This means that the most powerful being in the MCU might not be Thanos, Kang or anyone one of the Avengers themselves – not when any of them can be knocked off of their spot by Homer Simpson.
In Variety‘s reporting on the Simpsons Movie sequel announcement, they revealed that, “The film has taken the place of an untitled Marvel project, which has been removed from the studio’s schedule. In terms of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, there will no longer be a new comic book installment between Avengers: Doomsday on Dec. 18, 2026 and Avengers: Secret Wars on Dec. 17, 2027.”
Considering how recent Marvel Cinematic Universe installments have massively underperformed financially when compared to their mighty predecessors, it’s easy to see why Disney would take another bite from the Simpsons apple (or, more realistically, the Simpsons donut) when the first Simpsons movie made back its budget sevenfold. The Simpsons Movie (2007) grossed $536 million at the international box office on a $75 million budget, a much more favorable return than the recent MCU installment The Thunderbolts*, which made just $382 million against a budget of $180 million.
Crucially, however, the original Simpsons movie exceeded 20th Century Fox’s wildest financial expectations in large part due to the fact that it had much of the original Simpsons comedic talent involved in the writing process. In addition to Groening’s participation, the screenplay for The Simpsons Movie lists James L. Brooks, Al Jean, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Mike Scully, Matt Selman and John Swartzwelder among others as co-writers, and, unless Disney can bring that entire group of now-geriatric Simpsons giants back for the sequel, the massive community of Simpsons fans who haven’t watched a new episode in decades may not be tempted enough to return to theaters.
Unless there is a serious Simpsons brain trust behind The Simpsons Movie 2, this all may very well be nothing more a Hail Mary attempt from a Disney film operation that is still reeling from a disastrous 2023, which went down as the all-time worst year for the MCU – so far.