Matt Groening Interview

From Crave Online:

What took so long to do the movie?

For me, part of the reason was, we're coming up on the 20th year of the show, we're coming up on the 400th episode, and if we're ever going to do it, we should do it now. I don't want to do it [when] for some reason the show goes away and then do a movie. I thought it would really be neat to do a movie while the fans are still clamoring for it.

You'll see more of The Simpsons than you really should see and probably things, people you don't want to see. Whoever you don't want to see naked on The Simpsons, you know that's who you're going to see. Sorry about Marge.

Futurama is coming back!

Talk about a day job and night job, my night job after The Simpsons is Futurama, which is coming back on Comedy Central in 2008, 16 new episodes, and we're going to be running the old episodes, as well.

I always felt like we were a little bit like the original Star Trek. I always thought that working with my partner, David X. Cohen, that we knew that the people who loved the show really, really loved it and they wrote petitions, they wrote letters and e-mails and it just seemed right. And also, everybody that worked on the show loved it. So when it came time when the show did come back, everybody without exception said, "I'm on board." At this point, I said, "We're thinking of gearing up the show again." They said, "I'm on board." Everybody, Katy Sagal, all the actors, John Dimaggio, Billy West. The original animation team, the original animation house, the original writers. Everybody came back. It was great.