Prehistory - The Tracey Ullman shorts

The Simpsons are the brainchild of Matt Groening. He started out as a cartoonist by drawing a weekly comic strip for a set of regional newspapers, called "Life In Hell." They featured a rabbit called Blinky (yes, that's the name of the three-eyed fish in The Simpsons) and detailed the dark side of life. Books of these early cartoons are sold in bookstores.

Then one day, Matt got a call from James L Brooks (now co-producer of The Simpsons). James had seen his comic strip and wanted Matt to do some animation for the Tracey Ullman show - minute long "buffer" cartoons, showing before and after commercials.

The Tracey Ullman Show was a weekly American television variety show, hosted by British comedian and onetime pop singer Tracey Ullman. It debuted on April 5, 1987 as the FOX network's second primetime series (after Married... with Children), and ran until May 26, 1990. The show featured sketch comedy along with many musical numbers.

Matt originally planned to use his Life In Hell characters, however, at the last moment, he realized that doing this would ruin the characters as well as the fact that animating Life in Hell would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a dysfunctional family. So he made up some more characters on the spot: The Simpsons. As he was not feeling particularly creative that day, he named them after his only father: Matt's father is called Homer, and his mother is called Margaret (he thought Marge was a funnier name). He also has two sisters called Lisa and Maggie. In the case of Bart, he was modeled after Groening's older brother, Mark; however he substituted "Bart" for Mark. He called the main character Bart, because it is an anagram of 'brat'. He sketched out the original drawings for the family in a matter of minutes while sitting outside James Brooks' office.

Jay Kogen, writer-producer of The Tracey Ullman Show (1987–89) and The Simpsons (1989–93) said in an interview: They really wanted Life in Hell. But Matt was making a good bit of money on mugs and calendars from Life in Hell, and Fox wanted to own the whole thing. He said, "I won't sell you this. But I have this other family, called The Simpsons, that you can have." And then he proceeded to draw something on a napkin that legend has it he just made up on the spot. And they said, "O.K., we'll do that!"

The Simpson family was first aired in shorts format, on April 19, 1987. The shorts are a series of 48 one-minute shorts that ran for three seasons, before the characters spun off into their own half-hour prime time show. The animation and voices of the characters were extremely crappy in comparison with more current Simpsons episodes; and as Matt Groening mentioned during an interview: "I gave the animators my rough sketches... I thought they were going to clean them up a little, but it turns out all they were doing was tracing my drawings."

The stories were written and storyboarded by Matt Groening. The actors who voiced the characters would later reprise their roles in The Simpsons.

Dan Castellaneta performed the voices of Homer Simpson, Abraham Simpson, and Krusty the Clown. Homer's voice sounds different in the shorts compared to most episodes of the half-hour show. Castellaneta had been part of the regular cast of The Tracey Ullman Show and had done some voice over work in Chicago alongside his wife Deb Lacusta. Voices were needed for the shorts, so the producers decided to ask Castellaneta as well as Julie Kavner to voice Homer and Marge rather than hire more actors. Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, and Yeardley Smith performed the voices of Marge Simpson, Bart Simpson, and Lisa Simpson respectively. While most of the characters' personalities are similar to what they are in the series, Lisa is portrayed as a female version of Bart without the intelligent nature that she possesses in the half-hour series.

The animation was produced at Klasky Csupo, (an entertainment production company located in Los Angeles, California founded by artist/producer Arlene Klasky and master animator Gábor Csupó) with Wesley Archer, David Silverman, and Bill Kopp being animators for the first season. After season one it was animated by Archer and Silverman.

Gabor Csupo said in an interview: When Jim Brooks originally saw Matt Groening's drawings on his wall, it was all black-and-white, just the line drawing, no color or anything. And that's how he wanted to do the show. And we said, "You know what? We gonna give you color for the same price." And all of a sudden the eyes lit up and he said, "O.K., you guys are on." The characters were so beautiful but, let's face it, primitively designed that we thought that we could counterbalance that design with shocking colors. That's why we came up with the yellow skin, and the blue hair for Marge. Georgie Peluse was the colorist and the person who decided to make the characters yellow. According to David Silverman; she had a weird, wonderful sense of color design. A really interesting sense of color. As he mentions in an interview: "I think she did that because Bart, Lisa and Maggie had no hairlines, and if you made them flesh-colored it would look very strange. It wouldn't work. To Matt's credit, he looked at it and said, Marge is yellow with blue hair? That's hilarious--let's do it!"

The bumper episodes were amusing snippets of the dysfunctional family's daily life, focusing mostly on the kids being kids, and the grief they caused their parents.

The first short aired was "Good Night". The final short to air was "TV Simpsons", originally airing on May 14, 1989.

Only a few of these shorts have been released on DVD. "Good Night" was included on The Simpsons Season 1 DVD. Five of the shorts were later used in the clip show episode "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular", which was released on the Season 7 DVD. These five shorts were "Good Night", which was featured in its entirety and portions of "The Perfect Crime", "Space Patrol", "World War III", and "Bathtime".

Though critics liked The Tracey Ullman Show, the series wasn't a big hit; but, then, neither was much else on the network. Still, Barry Diller (former chairman and C.E.O., Fox), saw that the big-three networks were getting old and tired—they were losing viewers to cable and independent networks—and he was eager to experiment. In early 1988, he launched one of television's first reality programs, America's Most Wanted (Cops would follow in 1989), while taking the sitcom in lewd new directions with Married … with Children. When Brooks approached him with the idea of making The Simpsons into its own series, Diller eventually bit, thinking that the show might be, as he later put it, "the one that can crack the slab for us."

So in 1989, Fox commissioned a whole series: 13 full-length episodes. The animation was still a little crude, but the show was a huge hit nonetheless.

Tracey Ullman would later file a lawsuit, claiming that her show was the source of The Simpsons success and therefore should receive a share of the show's profit. She wanted a share of The Simpsons' merchandising and gross profits and believed she was entitled to $2.5 million of Fox's estimated $50 million in 1992. The Fox network had paid her $58,000 in royalties for The Simpsons as well as $3 million for the 3 1/2 seasons her show was on the air. Eventually the courts ruled in favor of the network.

The Simpsons - Season 1

In 1989, a team of production companies adapted The Simpsons into a half-hour series for the Fox Broadcasting Company. They continued working with the Klasky Csupo animation house. Jim Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the Fox network that prevented Fox from interfering with the show's content.

FOX was very nervous about the show because they were unsure that they could sustain the audience's attention for the duration of the episode. They proposed that they should do three 7 minute shorts per episode and four specials until the audience adjusted. In the end, they proposed FOX for 13 full-length episodes; and the deal was done.

The series was originally set to debut in November of 1989 with the episode "Some Enchanted Evening" (13th and final episode of the first season), which was meant to introduce the main characters. However, during the first screening of the episode, the producers discovered that the animation was so appalling that 70% of the episode needed to be redone.

One problem was that much of the actual work would have to be farmed out to studios in Korea, which were used to animating Transformers and not sophisticated comedy shows. Another was that most of the staff—including Brooks and Groening—had little experience with animation. According to Michael Mendel, when the first show came back from Korea it was a complete disaster. It was unairable.

So, The producers considered to cancel the series if the next episode "Bart the Genius" turned out as bad, but it only suffered from easily fixable problems. Finally the producers convinced Fox to move the debut to December 17, and aired "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" as the first episode of the series. It must be pointed out that due to the aforementioned animation problems, this episode which was originally the eighth episode produced for season one; was finally aired as the first of the series; that's why Santa's Little Helper is missing during the first half of the season that followed. It's also known as "The Simpsons Christmas Special". Ironically "Some Enchanted Evening" was aired as the season finale.

Barry Diller said that when they screened the first episode, for a number of Fox executives, they all went down to Gracie Films bungalow over at The Simpsons, and not a single person in the room was laughing, except for him and Jim Brooks. However they put it on, and it became more and more successful every week.

The problem with the animation from the producers' point-of-view was that it did not go by a distinct style envisioned for the show. At the time there were only a few choices for animation style. Usually, they would either follow the style of Disney, Warner Brothers or Hanna-Barbera. Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons had a universe that was bendy and the characters seemed to be made of rubber. The producers wanted a realistic environment in which the characters and objects could not do anything that was not possible in the real world. One example with the early animation being cartoonish was that the doors behaved liked rubber when slammed. The style of Hanna-Barbera featured the use of cartoon sounds, which they did not want either.

Directorial duties for the retakes were handed from Kent Butterworth to David Silverman, who already had considerable experience directing the shorts.

The episode, being the first to air, lacked the now famous opening sequence which was later added in the second episode when Groening thought of the idea of a longer opening sequence resulting in less animation.

David Silverman directed this episode, although Rich Moore storyboarded it and designed Flanders. In this episode, Barney had yellow hair which was the same color as his skin, but that was later dropped because of the belief that only the Simpson family should have such hair.

The second episode to be aired was "Bart the Genius" and as mentioned before it represented a turning point for the future of the show, as it was also the second episode produced, directly after the disastrous animation of "Some Enchanted Evening," so, the future of the series depended on how the animation turned out on this episode. Fortunately, thing went fine, the animation proved to be more acceptable, and the show went forward.

It was the first episode written by Jon Vitti and the first directed by David Silverman.

The episode was the first to feature the series' full title sequence, including the chalkboard gag and couch gag. Matt Groening developed the lengthy sequence in order to cut down on the animation necessary for each episode, but devised the two gags as compensation for the repeated material each week. However it must me mentioned that title sequences of such length were uncommon by that time. Later, as the finished episodes became longer, the production team were reluctant to cut the stories in order to allow for the long title sequence, so shorter versions of it were developed. The episode also introduced the characters Martin Prince and Edna Krabappel. It was also the first episode to use of Bart's catchphrase "Eat my shorts."

There were a few problems with the finished animation for this second episode. The banana in the opening scene was colored incorrectly, as the Korean animators were unfamiliar with the fruit, and the final bathtub scene was particularly problematic, including issues with lip synchronization. Nevertheless, the broadcasted episode was the best of several attempts.

The first season won one Emmy Award, and received four additional nominations. Although television shows are limited to one episode a category, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" was considered a separate special, and was nominated alongside "Life on the Fast Lane" for Outstanding Animated Program; "Life on the Fast Lane" won the award. "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" was also nominated for "Outstanding Editing in a Miniseries or Special", while "The Call of the Simpsons" was nominated for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Comedy Series or a Special". The main theme song, composed by Danny Elfman, was nominated for "Outstanding Achievement in Main Title Theme Music"

The show hit a ratings high at the end of its first season, in the spring of 1990, cracking the Top 10 (the only Fox show to do so that year). Fox struck a deal with Mattel, and talking Bart Simpson dolls began disappearing from department-store shelves. Bart T-shirts were selling at the rate of a million per day in North America. His catchphrases, such as "Underachiever and proud of it" and "Don't have a cow, man," became staples of early-90s lexicon. Bootleg merchandise was soon as ubiquitous as the real thing. "Black Bart" T-shirts were a popular phenomenon in African-American communities, with Bart's catchphrases altered to "Watch it, mon!" and, without irony, "You wouldn't understand; it's a black thing". The Simpsons merchandise sold well and generated US$2 billion in revenue during the first 14 months of sales.

With Bart omnipresent and Fox expanding its programming schedule from three nights a week to five, a bold plan was hatched: beginning with the show's second season, in the fall of 1990, it would be moved to Thursday nights, where it would take on the reigning television champion, NBC's The Cosby Show.

The Simpsons - Season 2

"Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish" (4th episode of the 2nd season) was the first episode produced for the season, but "Bart Gets an F" aired first because Bart was popular at the time and the producers decided that to premiering with a Bart themed episode would draw more attention.

So, "Bart Gets an F" is the first episode of The Simpsons' second season, aired on October 11, 1990. This was the first episode to feature the series' new, shorter opening sequence. This episode marked the first appearance of Mayor Quimby.

The second season featured a new opening sequence, which was shortened by fifteen seconds from its original length of roughly 1 minute, 30 seconds. The opening sequence for the first season showed Bart stealing a "Bus Stop" sign; whilst the new sequence featured him skateboarding past several characters who had been introduced during the previous season. Starting with this season, there were three versions of the opening: a full roughly 1 minute 15 second long version, a 45 second version and a 25 second version. This gave the show's editors more leeway.

The episode was ranked 31st on Entertainment Weekly' list of the 100 Greatest Moments in Television. It marked the first time that The Simpsons aired at the same time as The Cosby Show on NBC. It averaged an 18.4 Nielsen Rating and 29% of the audience. An estimated 33.6 million viewers watched the episode, making it the number one show in terms of actual viewers that week. At the time, it was the most watched episode in the history of the Fox Network and it is still the highest rated episode in the history of the show.

This episode marked a presage of the passing of the baton from '80s family function to '90s dysfunction--it immediately took a chunk out of the NBC champ. and as Matt Groening recalls, "That was when we started figuring out what we were doing, I thought, Okay, we're going to be around for a while."

However the Fox network decided to move The Simpsons from 8:00 PM on Sunday night to 8:00 PM on Thursday where it would compete with The Cosby Show, the number one show at the time. Most of the producers, including James L. Brooks, were against this desicion because The Simpsons had been in the top 10 while airing on Sunday and they were sure this would cause the ratings to plummet.

During the second season The Cosby Show beat The Simpsons every time, furthermore The Simpsons fell out of the top 10. It would not be until the third season episode "Homer at the Bat" (17th episode of the 3rd season) that The Simpsons would beat The Cosby Show for the first time.

Speaking mainly from the animation side, as specified by Silverman, the animation started to click at the beginning of season 2, it was beginning to look more standardized. There were flashes of really good animation here and there. There were some in the first season, especially with Brad Bird's episode, "Krusty Gets Busted" (12th episode of the 1st season); that episode of the 1st season really helped set a standard for the 2nd season.

The 2nd season saw the introduction of several new recurring characters, including Mayor Quimby, Kang and Kodos, Maude Flanders, Bill and Marty, Dr. Hibbert, Roger Meyers, Sideshow Mel, Lionel Hutz, Dr. Nick Riviera, Blue Haired Lawyer, Rainier Wolfcastle, Troy McClure, Groundskeeper Willie, Hans Moleman, Professor Frink and Comic Book Guy.

In the beginning, Bart was made to be the main character. This is evident from the vast number of Bart-orientated episodes in the first few Seasons, such as Bart The General and Bart The Daredevil. Bart was also the center of much of the merchandise, and even the focal point of two music videos: Do The Bartman and Trouble.

However, after a few Seasons, it emerged that Homer was more popular, hence the large increase in Homer-orientated episodes in later seasons, such as Homer The Heretic and Homer Vs. Patty & Selma among others.

The Simpsons - Season 3

Aired between September 19, 1991 and May 7, 1992. This season could be considered as the one which made The Simpson to finally take off for good. During this season 24 episodes were aired.

During this season Hank Azaria became a regular cast member. He joined the show aged 22, having previously performed only one voice over, as an animated dog in the Fox pilot Hollywood Dog. The first voice he performed was that of town bartender Moe Szyslak, replacing Christopher Collins who had voiced the character in several previous episodes. At the time he was doing a play, in which he performed the role of a drug dealer, basing his voice on Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon. He used that voice in the audition, and was told by Matt Groening and Sam Simon to make it more gravelly, with it becoming the voice of Moe. Groening and Simon thought it was perfect and took Azaria over to the Fox recording studio. At that point he was given a contract and made a permanent member of the cast. As well as Moe, Wiggum and Apu, Azaria provides the voices of Comic Book Guy, Carl Carlson, Cletus Spuckler, Professor Frink, Dr. Nick Riviera, Lou, Snake, Kirk Van Houten, the Sea Captain, Superintendent Chalmers, Duffman, the "Wise Guy" and numerous other one-time characters.

Regarding the animation and style of the characters, this season was the one that standardized many of their aspect. They had other artists joining the staff, and different layout artists would bring different ideas. When they were working on the "Flaming Moe" episode, Rich Moore really got to develop Moe as a character, coming up with little traits like scratching his ear. In the second season, the directors had fewer episodes, so they could really focus more on each episode. They were all beginning to clarify how these characters should move and act. The third season saw the introductions of four characters: Lunchlady Doris, Fat Tony, and Kirk and Luann Van Houten.

This was the final season released on VHS. All later seasons were released on DVD only. The DVD edition featured commentary for every episode, keeping to tradition.

On January 27, 1992, the first President Bush proclaimed "We're going to strengthen the American family to make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons" during a speech of his re-election campaign at the National Religious Broadcaster's convention in Washington.

Afterwards, the show retaliated when Bart responded, in the next broadcast of the Simpsons which was actually a rerun of "Stark Raving Dad" (first aired on September 19, 1991) on January 30. In that broadcast there was hastily included a new opening, which was a response to Bush's speech. The scene begins in the Simpsons living room. Homer, Patty, and Selma sit on couch. Maggie is in her high chair next to the couch. Bart and Lisa are sprawled on the carpet. They all stare at the TV, watching Bush's speech. When Bush says "We need a nation closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons", Bart replies "Hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the Depression, too". The animation for this scene was recycled from the Season 2 episode Simpson and Delilah.

Due to the popularity already aquired by the show; they were also transported to the Video Games world with The Simpsons: The Arcade Game. It's an arcade game produced by Konami in 1991. It is a beat 'em up based on the cartoon series of the same name. The voice actors of the immediate family (Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, and Yeardley Smith) provide their talents for their respective characters. The game was ported to the Commodore 64, and PC.

The Simpsons - Season 4 and on

During the 4th season when the episode "A Streetcar Named Marge" was produced. The musical within the episode contains a controversial song about New Orleans, which describes the city as a "home of pirates, drunks and whores", among other things. Jeff Martin, the writer of the episode, had meant the song to be a parody of the opening number in Sweeney Todd, which speaks of London in unflattering terms. Al Jean later explained that two Cajun characters were supposed to walk out of the theater in disgust, but none of the voice actors could provide a convincing Cajun accent.

Before the premiere of the fourth season, the producers sent two episodes to critics: "Kamp Krusty" and "A Streetcar Named Marge". A New Orleans critic viewed "A Streetcar Named Marge" and published the song lyrics in his newspaper before the episode aired. Many readers took the lyrics out of context, and New Orleans' Fox affiliate, WNOL, received about one hundred complaints on the day the episode aired. Several local radio stations also held on-air protests in response to the song.

The Simpsons' producers rushed out a chalkboard gag for the next episode aired on October 8, 1992 "Homer the Heretic". It read, "I will not defame New Orleans." The gag was their attempt to "apologize" for the song and hopefully bring the controversy to an end.

As Bartmania cooled off, and the series moved toward institutional status with its fourth, fifth, and sixth seasons, the show's quality miraculously refused to drop. It got funnier, smarter, richer in allusion and parody. The producers changed animation studios from Klasky Csupo to Film Roman in the fourth season, updating the rudimentary look with slicker designs and a more varied palette.

After Simon had left, in 1993, different writers were promoted to fill the role of show-runner. Al Jean and Mike Reiss took over first. Then the producers brought in David Mirkin, who had written for Three's Company and created Get a Life, with Chris Elliot. After Mirkin came longtime writers Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, followed by Mike Scully (who stayed in charge for four seasons—the unwritten rule had been that show-runners stay for two years), before the show was given back to Al Jean, who has run The Simpsons since 2001.

As the series relinquished the emotional grounding of the early years, it became more topical. Later episodes seemed increasingly tailored to guest appearances—a forgivable sin, concerning the impressive list: Mick Jagger, Mel Gibson, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, Steve Martin, Elton John, Ludacris, Ricky Gervais, Elvis Costello, Stephen Hawking, Tony Blair, Frank Gehry, Susan Sarandon, Tom Clancy, and J. K. Rowling (to name a few). Even the earliest seasons had been graced by Michael Jackson, Penny Marshall, and Elizabeth Taylor, who voiced Maggie's first word, "Daddy".

Regarding the guest appereances when Michael Jackson played the voice of Leon Kompowsky in the first episode of season 3 "Stark Raving Dad", the producers didn't want him to be uncredited; they wanted him to be Michael Jackson; according to them that was the point of the whole joke of the episode. So they began saying that if you're going to be a guest on the show, you've got to own up to it. Hovever, Michael Jackson didn't want credit. So, in the third season they made a rule: You want to be on the show? You gotta own up to it! Though there's an exception with Joe Mantegna, who plays as Fat Tony. When he first appeared in the show with "Bart the Murderer," (4th episode of the 3rd season) Joe said, "Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, you've got to get me on to do Fat Tony". So when-ever they do Fat Tony, they get Joe Mantegna.

In Season 14, production switched from traditional cel animation to digital ink and paint. The first episode to experiment with digital coloring was "Radioactive Man" in 1995. Animators used digital ink and paint during production of the Season 12 episode "Tennis the Menace", but Gracie Films delayed the regular use of digital ink and paint until two seasons later. The already completed "Tennis the Menace" was broadcast as made.

As the show's revenue continued to rise through syndication and DVD sales, the main cast stopped appearing for script readings in April 2004. The work stoppage occurred after weeks of unsuccessful negotiations with Fox, in which the cast asked for an increase in their pay to $360,000 per episode, or $8 million over a 22-episode season. On May 2, 2004, the actors reached an agreement with Fox; it was resolved—the actors now make more than "a hundred thousand dollars" an episode, and thus the show has kept rolling on. The contract has been renewed until 2009, and on July 27, 2007, the characters made the jump to the big screen.

At the end of 2007 the writers of The Simpsons went on strike together with the Writers Guild of America. However, the broadcasting of The Simpsons was not be affected by the strike. Each episode requires a long time to get produced, but since the episodes are ready up to a year in advance; the strike had to go on for a while if they should run out of new episodes.

While debate over the show's quality will rage (mostly on the Internet), what is significant is that it has persevered. Maybe The Simpsons' glory days passed a decade ago, the show is still reliable for some intelligent laughs, and comfortably sits in its eight-o'clock Sunday spot, watched by 10 million viewers every week. The writers' room is nearly as vibrant as ever, continuing to draw from Harvard and the cream of the young comedy-writing crop.

A jump to the big screen - The Movie

The production staff had considered a film adaptation of The Simpsons since early in the series. The show's creator, Matt Groening, felt a feature length film would allow them to increase the show's scale and animate sequences too complex for a TV series.

There were attempts to adapt the fourth season episode "Kamp Krusty" into a film, but difficulties were encountered in expanding the episode to feature-length. For a long time the project was held up.

There was difficulty finding a story that was sufficient for a film, and the crew did not have enough time to complete such a project, as they already worked full time on the show. Groening also expressed a wish to make Simpstasia, a parody of Fantasia; it was never produced, partly because it would have been too difficult to write a feature-length script. Before his death, Phil Hartman had said he had wished to make a live action Troy McClure film, and several of the show's staff had expressed a desire to help create it.

The voice cast was signed on to do the film in 2001, and work then began on the script. The producers were initially worried that creating a film would have a negative effect on the series, as they did not have enough crew to focus their attention on both projects. As the series progressed, additional writers and animators were hired so that both the show and the film could be produced at the same time.

Groening and James L. Brooks invited back Mike Scully and Al Jean (who continued to work as showrunner on the television series) to produce the film with them. They then signed David Silverman (who, in anticipation of the project, had quit his job at Pixar) to direct the film. A big writing team was assembled, with many of the writers from the show's early seasons being chosen. David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, George Meyer, John Swartzwelder and Jon Vitti were selected. Ian Maxtone-Graham and Matt Selman joined later, and Brooks, Groening, Scully, and Jean also wrote parts of the script. Sam Simon did not return having left the show over creative differences in 1993. Former writer Conan O'Brien wanted to work with the Simpsons staff again.

It must be noted also that the producers arranged a deal with Fox that would allow them to abandon production of the film at any point if they felt the script was unsatisfactory.

So, work continued on the screenplay from 2003 onwards, in the small bungalow where Groening first produced The Simpsons in 1987.

The writers spent six months discussing a plot, and each of them offered different ideas. Jean suggested the family rescue manatees, which finally became the 2005 episode "Bonfire of the Manatees", there was also an idea of implementing something similar to that of The Truman Show, where the characters discover their lives were just part of a TV show; though the latter was rejected by Groening, as he felt that the Simpsons should "never become aware of themselves as celebrities".

Then, Groening read about a town that had to get rid of pig feces in their water supply, which inspired the plot of the film. The decision for Flanders to have in an important role also came early on, as Jean wished to see Bart wonder what his life would be like if Flanders were his father. Having eventually decided on the basic outline of the plot for the film, the writers then separated it into seven sections. Jean, Scully, Reiss, Swartzwelder, Vitti, Mirkin, and Meyer wrote 25 pages each, and the group met one month later to merge the seven sections into one "very rough draft".

The film's script was written in the same way as the television series: the writers sitting around a table, pitching ideas and trying to make each other laugh. The script went through over 100 revisions. Groening described his desire to also make the film dramatically stronger than a TV episode, saying that he wanted to "give you something that you haven't seen before".

Animation for the film began in January 2006. Itchy & Scratchy short was the first scene to be storyboarded. Computer-generated imagery was rejected by Groening calling the film's animation "deliberately imperfect" and "a tribute to the art of hand-drawn animation". The format was wider (2.35:1 aspect ratio) than that of the show; and they added more details to the background as well as more color variations and tone changes, not enough so it would look totally different from the show but enough so it would have more richness on the screen. Otherwise, you'd be looking at very large flat colors.

In terms of the animation, they basically lavished the same intensity on every scene that they would do to a specific shot on the show, so according to Silverman where they are going to lavish a lot of attention on this one scene, for this one episode; they tried to lavish the same amount of attention on every scene. A lot of the animation was produced using Wacom Cintiq tablets, which allowed images to be drawn directly onto a computer monitor to facilitate production. Animation production work was divided among four studios around the world: Film Roman in Burbank, California, Rough Draft Studios in Glendale, California, and AKOM and Rough Draft Korea in Seoul, South Korea. Like the television series, the storyboarding, characters, background layout and animatic parts of production, were done in America. The overseas studios completed the animation, in-betweening and digital ink and paint processes.

The animators looked for inspiration films like, The Incredibles, Triplets of Belleville, and Bad Day at Black Rock; as according to Silverman they represent "a great education in staging because of how the characters are placed". For crowd scenes they've been inspired by It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Silverman looked also at some of the Simpsons episodes he had directed, primarily his two favorites, "Homie the Clown" and "Three Men and a Comic Book". Mike B. Anderson, Lauren MacMullan, Rich Moore, and Steven Dean Moore each directed the animation for around a quarter of the film under Silverman's supervision, with numerous other animators working on scenes.

As for the cast, for inspiration for the crowd scenes in the film, the production staff spent a long time looking at a poster that featured more than 320 Simpsons characters. Groening said they tried to include every single character in the film, with 98 having speaking parts.

The cast did the first of three table readings in May 2005, and began recording every week from June 2006 until the end of production. James L. Brooks directed them for the first time since the television show's early seasons. Castellaneta found the recording sessions "more intense" than recording the television series, and "more emotionally dramatic". Some scenes, such as Marge's video message to Homer, were recorded over one hundred times, leaving the voice cast exhausted.

The writers had written the opening concert scene without a specific band in mind. Green Day were cast in that role having requested to guest star in the show. Tom Hanks also appears as himself in the film and accepted the offer after just one phone call.

Nonetheless, because of lack of time, several guests who had recorded parts were cut from the film. Some examples of this are; Edward Norton recorded the part of the man who gets crushed as the dome is implemented, performing a Woody Allen impression. The staff felt the voice was too distracting, so Castellaneta re-recorded Norton's dialogue with a different voice; other examples include Isla Fisher, Erin Brockovich, Kelsey Grammer and Johnny Knoxville among others.

After winning a Fox and USA Today competition, Springfield, Vermont hosted the film's world premiere. The Simpsons Movie grossed a combined total of $74 million in its opening weekend in the US, taking it to the top of the box office, and set the record for highest grossing opening weekend for a film based on a television series, surpassing Mission Impossible II. It opened at the top of the international box office, taking $96 million from seventy-one overseas territories — including $27.8 million in the United Kingdom, making it Fox's second highest opening ever in that country. In Australia, it grossed AU$13.2 million, the biggest opening for an animated film and third largest opening weekend in the country. As of November 23, 2007 the film has a worldwide gross of $525,267,904.

7-Eleven stores redesigned a dozen of their stores to look like Kwik-E-Marts, Springfield, U.S.A.'s favorite convenience store owned by father of octuplets Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. Products from the show were brought to life, such as "Sprinklicious" donuts, Buzz Cola, Squishee frozen drinks, and KrustyO's, which sold over 4 million units. Burger King "Simpsonized" real life people into Simpsons characters, featured Krusty burgers instead of Whoppers, and had Homer drooling on Whoppers in their commercials. The promotion resulted in a 30% increase in profits for the changed 7-Eleven stores. The conversions lasted through early August, when the stores were converted back to 7-Elevens.

Future

Currently a twentieth season is under production, and due to be aired by fall 2008. No one knows for how many years the show will keep airing, but one thing is for sure; no other television series has achieved such a record of running for 20 consecutive years and still having that spark of success alive, as in the case of The Simpsons. Thus, it can be said for The Simpsons, that they represent a unique case in the history of television.