A new short starring Maggie Simpson, “Playdate with Destiny,” will run before Pixar’s Onward when it arrives in theaters on March 6th, 2020.
The news was officially announced on Twitter by The Simpsons executive producer Matt Selman, who included a tantalizing image suggesting that Maggie will be taking advantage of the glitz and glamor of the silver screen.
“PLAYDATE WITH DESTINY”
Starring Maggie Simpson
Exclusively in theaters before Pixar’s “Onward” March 6, 2020 pic.twitter.com/iDRc9pegqR— Matt Selman (@mattselman) February 28, 2020
Neither the short format nor the movie theater is uncharted ground for America’s favorite non-prehistoric animated family.
The Simpsons began as a series of shorts that Matt Groening created for the Tracey Ullman Show. The first, “Good Night,” premiered on the April 19th, 1987 episode of the variety program. Forty-eight shorts were aired on the Tracey Ullman Show between 1987 and 1989, when the shorts were spun-out into the 30-minute sitcom most viewers think of when they hear “The Simpsons.”
The Simpson family has also made many appearances on the big screen. A clip from the episode “Burn’s Heir,” originally aired April 14th, 1994, features a gag centered around the THX sound system, and was subsequently shown in theaters as an advertisement for THX.
On July 27th, 2007, The Simpsons Movie, a full-length feature starring the denizens of Springfield, was released in theaters.
And the previous theatrical Simpsons short, “Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare,” premiered in theaters on July 13th, 2012, running before the 20th Century Fox release Ice Age: Continental Drift. The short was well received and subsequently nominated for an Academy Award.
While Pixar releases typically include a short before the feature, the digital animation studio has produced previous shorts in-house. Disney’s acquisition of Fox has opened the door for The Simpsons cartoon to accompany Pixar’s latest feature.
The Simpsons has been self-aware of the fact that they have been folded into the larger Disney family of intellectual property, with a gag in the episode “Frinkcoin,” aired February 23rd, 2020, centering around Patty and Selma lamenting that they haven’t had a cigarette since the acquisition before donning matching Mickey Mouse ears.
