Simpsons creator Matt Groening seemingly accidentally confirms that The Simpsons Hit & Run is coming back
He was quickly interrupted by showrunner Matt Selman
The Simpsons creator Matt Groening seemingly let it slip that The Simpsons: Hit & Run is making a comeback.
The Simpsons: Hit & Run was originally released in October 2003 for PS2, GameCube and Xbox, and was The Simpsons’ take on Grand Theft Auto. Before that, in 2001, there was the Crazy Taxi-like The Simpsons: Road Rage.
Fans have been asking for a re-release of both games for some time now, though Hit & Run is the one that has the most interest.
During a Simpsons panel at Disney’s D23 convention in Anaheim, California, one attendee asked the panel whether, now that a second Simpsons Movie was on the way, there was the potential for a second Hit & Run game too.
“That would certainly be a treat,” The Simpsons showrunner Matt Selman said. Selman co-wrote the original Hit & Run game, as well as its predecessor The Simpsons: Road Rage.
“I don’t know if I’m speaking out of turn, [but] I think the original game is coming back in some form,” Groening then said, to gasps in the audience.
“Or… not,” Selman comedically interjected, seemingly trying to de-escalate Groening’s apparent confirmation. Groening then quickly changed the subject by telling an anecdote about the making of the games instead.
“By the way, one of the first Simpsons games was The Simpsons: Road Rage,” he said. “And people said ‘you can’t call it Road Rage, that will encourage road rage’. And we did it anyway, obviously, and then when the next game came out, which was Hit & Run, nobody had a problem.”
“Also,” Selman joked, “the lawyers of Crazy Taxi said ‘you can’t rip off Crazy Taxi’, and money changed hands.”
In a 2023 interview, The Simpsons: Hit & Run producer John Melchior revealed that at two more Simpsons games were in development including The Simpsons: Hit & Run 2, but publisher Vivendi Universal Games was given the option to sign a deal for five Simpsons games and rejected it.
“Simpsons Hit & Run 2 would have been done by Radical, [and] there was a medieval Simpsons game that Matt Groening pitched, which was being done at Stormfront after Lord of the Rings,” he told MinnMax.
“The biggest crime was that Vivendi did not obtain the Simpsons licence, though they had an offer in. The Simpsons came back with an offer, five games for X amount of dollars, it was a really good deal, and Vivendi said no. After the success of Hit & Run.”
Instead, EA acquired The Simpsons licence and released a single console game, The Simpsons Game, back in 2007. There hasn’t been another Simpsons console game since then, though there have been Simpsons crossovers in such titles as Lego Dimensions and Fortnite.
