The Last Kang & Kodos ‘Simpsons’ Episode was Almost the Next Movie

A few weeks ago we reviewed “The Man Who Came to be Dinner,” a Simpsons episode dealing with the family getting abducted by the show’s resident aliens, Kang & Kodos.

Although we gave it a mixed review, the show had a lot of potential – as a matter of fact, it was once going to become the sequel to The Simpsons Movie, according to a tweet by showrunner Al Jean.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Jean explained that the January 4th episode, which he co-wrote with David Mirkin, was originally planned as last year’s season 24 finale, but he and executive producer James L. Brooks held it back as a possible sequel idea.

“Two of the allures were exploring the rules of the new world and the cinematic nature of doing something in space,” Jean said. “But then we were worried that people might think it’s an idea that’s not canonical—it doesn’t really happen, unlike all of other 560 episodes that really ‘happened’—so the ultimate decision was to air it as an episode. It just got to the point where if we were unsure about it as a movie, then it would be good to air the episode. And then if we do a movie, we’d just think of something else…. So if you want to know what was thought of a possible Simpsons Movie 2, we just aired it—for free. You can see it for free!” he joked.

As he has previously done, Jean speculated further on the possibility of another film ever happening. “My guess it’s 50-50,” he said. “Our feeling is that the first movie was pretty successful and we don’t want the second movie to be any less successful. And I’m not talking about financially only — I’m also talking about no one wants to do a movie where people think, ‘Why did they do that? It wasn’t necessary.’”

Necessary? Who cares about that? As a wise man famously said: “Is it necessary for me to drink my own urine? No! But I do it anyway, because it’s sterile and I like the taste.”

I think we’d all like the chance to taste another Simpsons movie.

[via EW]