THE SIMPSONS’ Matt Selman on Teaming Up with the NFL (‘A No-Brainer’) and the ‘Experimental’ Disney+ Exclusive Episodes

THE SIMPSONS may be on the verge of celebrating its jaw-dropping 35th anniversary (on Tuesday, December 17), but the long-running animated series is also hitting a couple of notable firsts in December.

First, on Monday, December 9, Disney+, ESPN+, and NFL+ will stream THE SIMPSONS FUNDAY FOOTBALL, “an animated MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL game transformed in real-time into the iconic SIMPSONS world using Sony’s Beyond Sports Technology. Atoms Stadium in Springfield will host the fully immersive fan viewing experience featuring the Cincinnati Bengals at the Dallas Cowboys, ESPN’s MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL game that evening.”

Then, on December 17, the initial Disney+ exclusive episodes of the show (a double installment entitled “O C’mon All Ye Faithful”) will debut. (Though Disney+ has been the home to multiple new SIMPSONS shorts, this marks the full first episodes to premiere there.)

This is, of course, on top of the team producing their regular Fox run of episodes. And still, “so far, we haven’t said no to a lot,” THE SIMPSONS showrunner Matt Selman tells Give Me My Remote with a laugh. “You just want to show Fox and Disney…they’re not divorced parents, but they don’t live together, either…There’s so many shows out there, so if there’s something that Disney wants us to do [like] this big NFL collab…that’s a big project. But they asked us first, we’re gonna say yes. We don’t want it to be some other show…It’s definitely a lot of work, but ESPN is doing the majority of the work. We’re trying to jam in as much SIMPSONS content as we can.” 

And with THE SIMPSONS regularly airing after NFL games on Fox, “football and SIMPSONS are the perfect fit, in terms of our fan base,” Selman notes. “So it’s a ton of work, but you just can’t say no to something that fun and that perfect…So that was a no-brainer to make that happen. And there’s some other crazier stuff probably coming in the future.” 

“Speaking of the parents getting along, Fox was cool to not object to SIMPSONS being on football on ESPN+,” he continues. “Fox was super cool to also allow us to promote the football thing on THE SIMPSONS’ social [media account], which is controlled by Fox. So, there is a partnership, because they’re not spitefully trying to undermine each other. They all know that more SIMPSONS is good for business.”

That notion has also led to an unconventional, and perhaps trailblazing, split of episodes between Fox (where the series has run since 1989) and its new second home on Disney+. “For seasons 35 and 36, it was always planned that Fox wanted 18 [episodes] and that Disney wanted four [per season],” Selman says. (The series, which currently stands as the longest-running primetime scripted show, has not yet been renewed officially beyond the current season 36.)

The showrunner calls the streaming exclusive episodes “a little more experimental and crazy,” kicking off with the double Christmas episode later this month.

“We’ve never done a double before,” he points out. “We’ve done two-parters. We’ve never done a double that’s not a two-parter.”

The distinction? “A two-parter has a cliffhanger that was built with a big moment in the middle as like the most dramatic, surprising, ‘What’s gonna happen?’ moment of the whole show,” Selman explains. “‘Who Shot Mr. Burns,’ [we] build, build, build, he was shot, and then it was who shot him? This one, there is no big act break in the middle that’s like, ‘What’s going to happen next?’ It’s just one big episode. It’s paced differently. We’ve never done a show that is paced like this.”

“I would say it’s like one-and-a-half episodes worth of story that really breathes,” he continues. “It’s not rushed. So it just doesn’t feel like a two-parter. It feels like one big fat, juicy Christmas present of an episode…This really has just this main story that’s of its own thing: A Marge-Flanders A-story and a Homer and Ralph B-story. But the kids have stuff, too.”

The other two season 35 Disney+ exclusive episodes (which also include a voice performance from retiring THE SIMPSONS star Pamela Hayden) are set to air in 2025.

“We have one that’s kind of a time travel adventure; it’s a little more future, genre experimental than we would usually do,” Selman previews. “And then we have one that’s kind of a parody of a BLUE PLANET or a Nat Geo animal documentary; just kind of adorable, screwed up, SIMPSONS animals.”

As for the four season 36 Disney+ episodes, Selman shares those are in the very early stages, and likely wouldn’t debut until “late 2025, possibly 2026.”

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