Image Credit: Fox By Dan Snierson
@dansnierson
If you’ve always wondered what would happen if Peter Griffin and Homer Simpson hung out at a bar while Bart and Stewie made prank phone calls, Family Guy is about to satisfy your crossover craving. In the Sept. 28 season premiere, “The Simpsons Guy,” the albino Griffins wind up by accident in Springfield, where they are greeted warmly by the hepatits-y Simpsons. But a fast friendship christened with delicious doughnuts may be forever destroyed by an argument over Pawtucket Patriot Ale and Duff Beer, which leads to an epic chicken fight.
To see the collision of these two animated worlds—plus a cameo by Bob from Bob’s Burgers—check out nearly five minutes of footage from the double-sized episode, which was screened on Saturday during the Family Guy panel at Comic-Con.
The Simpsons-Family Guy mash-up wasn’t the only upcoming episode teased during the panel. Of note, the Christmas installment will feature the return of Jesus to Quahog. “Peter and the guys discover that Jesus is a virgin, so they decide to go about helping him get laid,” hinted executive producer Steve Callaghan. (“We’re all going to hell,” quipped Mike Henry in the voice of Cleveland.)
Liam Neeson will play himself in a different episode: Every time Peter gets drunk he says he can beat up the badass movie star, so the guys call him on his bluff and arrange for him to meet Neeson, who “was very willing to poke fun at himself,” said executive producer Rich Appel. (Other guest-stars this season include Julie Bowen, Jeff Garlin, Allison Janney, Lea Thompson, and Joe Buck.) The new season will also feature Meg getting recruited to be a foot-fetish model, Stewie becoming pregnant with Brian’s baby, and Chris about to fail a history test when “Brian and Stewie take him on kind of a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure through time,” said Seth Green, a.k.a. voice of Chris.
And, yes, sometime in the future, the Griffins may live long and prosper: Callaghan noted that series creator Seth McFarlane “has talked from time to time of wanting to do a similar treatment” with the Star Trek films as they did with their Star Wars trilogy of parodies, including “Blue Harvest.”
As for those waiting for Family Guy not to spoof a movie but to make their own, well, you might have to wait a little — or a lot — longer. When a fan asked about that possibility during the Q&A session, director Peter Shin replied, “We kind of started… pre-work on it a couple years back, but I think it’s on hold right now because Seth is filming Ted 2. But I think maybe in the future it might happen.” Callaghan added that it was hard to find the time to make a movie while they were busy working on the show, but vowed: “Someday we will make that happen.”