Oakley/Weinstein & The Simpsons Movie

Dylan

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Went on a mission hill binge today and became genuinely curious as to whether it was ever revealed why they were the only show runners (apart from sam simon) not to be invited to work on the movie. all things considered, it's pretty strange. was there some behind the scenes drama?
 
I get the impression they weren't close with the others and asssume that was it :gatorshrug:
 
When you stop and think about it, by the time the movie was being made (2004-2007), Oakley and Weinstein hadn't been involved with the show in years. Their last season was S9 (1997-1998), which overlapped with season 8 in post-production, therefore they helped Scully during that first year of his (as EP).

Then they created the ill-fated Mission Hill (1999-2000), spent a year on Futurama (2000-2001), and then moved on to other projects.

Meanwhile, former showrunners like Mike Reiss and David Mirkin have kept themselves involved with the show as consultants for pretty much forever. And Mike Scully produced the film with Al Jean, as well as remaining a part-time consultant ever since he showran his last episode. In fact, if you look at who wrote the movie, it was pretty much people who were either still involved with the show or had just recently left (Meyer left in 2004, Swartzwelder in 2002, Vitti in 2003). Reportedly, Swartzwelder campaigned to be a part of the movie's development. Reiss and Vitti were already experienced in animated feature films with the first Ice Age.
 
At one point, it kinda felt like there was some behind-the-scenes drama where they weren't that close to the show anymore. Especially since the show, and the management style, changed so dramatically right afterwards under Mike Scully. I had wondered if the show deliberately pivoted away from their work. But everyone seemed to get along well in the DVD commentaries and stuff, there wasn't any sort of awkwardness between them and Matt Groening and others. As [MENTION=19936]jbauer[/MENTION] mentioned, they worked on Futurama afterwards.

I get the impression now that Oakley and Weinstein just moved on, wanted to do other stuff, and the show had just kinda mutually moved on as well.
 
Even though they hadn't been involved with the show for long (and if they had really moved on) I still think they should have been asked back to do some work on the film. Since they had a lot of great Simpsons stuff under their belt (season 7 especially) and seemed to get along well with the others I definitely think they could have improved the movie by adding their touch to it.
 
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