Matt Groening Says No 'Simpsons' Movie Until Show Is Over; Samuel L. Jackson Decides To Act Again?

Matt Groening told director Morgan Spurlock, who was interviewing the director at a keynote event in Cannes, that there will be no second ‘Simpsons’ movie until the TV show has ended it’s run . “It took 18 years to get around to doing the movie,” Groening said. “We got very frustrated. We thought it would take two years but it ended up taking four. Some day maybe we’ll do another one — but don’t hold your breath.”

So when is the end of the series? Apparently they are under contract for two more years, but that doesn’t mean they won’t re-up after that. “We cannot predict the end because we can’t believe we are still here today,” he said.

– Samuel L. Jackson, who seems to have suddenly decided to act again, between Rodrigo Garcia’s upcoming “Mother and Child,” and the forthcoming Cormac McCarthy adaptation “The Sunset Limited,” with Tommy Lee Jones and Michael Sheen, has now signed on to the drama “Same Kind of Different Me.” The independent film, from writers Roderick and Bruce Taylor (“The Brave One”), is based on the non-fiction book of the same name, about the friendship between an ex-con drifter and an international art dealer. Hey, Sam, this is great for you. You really need to leave the Tarantino/”Snakes On A Plane” world for a few years.

– Exploiting the recent loophole allowing films to be submitted in a language not native to that of their country, the U.K. have picked their submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar — the documentary “Afghan Star,” the winner of the World Documentary Audience award at Sundance this year. The film focuses on competitors on Afghanistan’s version of “American Idol.”

– Actress Isla Fisher is developing a pair of projects at Universal. The “Wedding Crashers” star, and partner of Sacha Baron Cohen, will produce and play the lead in an untitled romantic comedy from “Under the Tuscan Sun” helmer Audrey Wells, and “Life Coach,” from Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s Gary Sanchez company, about a woman who consults an unbalanced life coach. Hopefully at least one of them will be worthy of Fisher’s comic talents.

When the fourth ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ film title was announced as, “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” everyone just assumed it was based upon the Tim Powers pirate book of the same name. “I was still — as far as I understood — not free to talk about it,” the author the L.A. Times said about the legal disclosures he signed. “Then about a week ago my agent wrote and said, ‘You’re now able to say that in fact Disney did option the book.’ That happened a while ago, it’ll be three years in April.” Mystery officially solved for those that actually still had doubt. Happy?