Matt Groening said it out loud at D23, and the room caught it. Asked about a sequel to The Simpsons: Hit & Run, Groening said, "I think the original game is coming back in some form." Current showrunner Matt Selman followed immediately with "or not"—and by most accounts, the body language on both men suggested Groening had just disclosed something he was not supposed to.
The original Simpsons: Hit & Run launched in 2003 for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and Windows. It blended open-world driving mechanics with a GTA-style structure set across Springfield, and it sold well enough to become one of the defining licensed games of that console generation. More than two decades later, no official re-release exists on any current platform.
The title is absent from both the PlayStation Plus Classics Catalog and Microsoft's Xbox backward compatibility list, meaning players who want to run it today have to work through PC emulation. That gap is the clearest commercial opening for a publisher: there is a proven audience with no legal way to buy the product on modern hardware.
The most direct path back to market is a straight port—the original code cleaned up and dropped onto PS5, Xbox Series X and PC storefronts. That requires the least investment and carries the lowest risk. The economics are straightforward: a $20 to $30 digital release against a development cost that amounts to compatibility work, not a ground-up build.
The more expensive option is a full HD remaster. The source material supports it. The original art direction—Springfield's flat cartoon geometry—maps cleanly to modern rendering pipelines, and a remaster would let a publisher charge a higher price point while also reaching an audience that was not alive when the game shipped in 2003.
Voice acting is not an obstacle. The original cast recorded the dialogue for the 2003 release at a quality level that makes rerecording unnecessary. That removes one of the largest line items in a remaster budget. Licensed game remasters typically stumble on music rights and voice talent costs; Hit & Run's existing audio library sidesteps both.
The one real complication is licensing. The Simpsons IP sits with Fox, and any game release requires coordination between the studio, Groening's production company and a game publisher willing to carry the project. Licensed game deals have historically moved slowly, in part because IP holders and publishers negotiate revenue splits and release windows separately from development timelines. That structure has delayed or killed several cult classic revivals even after public announcements.
Groening's comment at D23 confirms only that some version of the game returning is under discussion or in development—not a publisher, a release date or a format. Selman's instinct to hedge the statement publicly suggests the announcement was premature rather than fabricated.
