The Simpsons Is Getting Two Treehouse Of Horror Episodes, Including A Full Special With Krusty As Pennywise (Sort Of) [D23]
The annual "Treehouse of Horror" episode of "The Simpsons" is going to Stephen King country for its latest installment. /Film is on the ground at D23 Expo today with all the latest news from Disney, and that includes a panel on the long-running animated Fox sitcom. The team behind "The Simpsons" already shared a sneak peek of "Treehouse of Horror XXXIV" at Comic-Con earlier this year, but now they've shared more details on the always-anticipated seasonal offering, including the fact that Krusty the Clown will be playing a familiar villainous clown.
The show will do not one but two Halloween episodes with four segments total, including a full-length parody of King's horror classic "It." Executive producer Matt Selman explained the idea for the first episode to the crowd at D23, saying, "Everyone loves Halloween so we thought we'd just do a terrific three-part Treehouse of Horror with three segments." Selman mentions that one segment will parody the popular manga "Death Note" using traditional anime style animation, while the others still haven't been announced.
Welcome to Kingsfield
The second episode, however, is set to be entirely an homage to King's doorstop of a book, "It," which follows a group of kids called The Loser's Club as they fight off a killer clown who feeds on fear. "We just said, you know, what's the most popular Simpsons tattoo that we could just do a whole segment about," Sellman joked, referencing a crop of Krusty-as-Pennywise tattoos that have appeared on social media in recent years. "And that of course became a parody of Rock Bottom Remainders star Stephen King's 'It.'"
Although Krusty is obviously a Pennywise-type figure in the episode, Selman admits he'll be using a different name for the sake of copyright purposes. "So it's a full-length Treehouse of Horror Presents with Krusty as, we call him Krusto," the EP shares. "We can't call him Pennywise, that's Warner Brothers, they're not as cool as Disney." Additionally, Selman reveals that the "very violent and traumatizing" episode takes place in Kingsfield, a renamed Springfield that opens up the door for a whole host of King-related in-jokes and references.
"Treehouse of Horror" has been a beloved part of "The Simpsons" since the show's early days, and often offers animators a chance to go wild with body horror and trippy breaks from the show's usual style. Yet the show has never devoted an entire episode to a single "Treehouse of Horror" story. If any horror creator is prolific enough to deserve the full-episode treatment, it's King. We'll see what Kingfield has in store when the episodes debuts on Fox on this fall.