Considering The Simpsons Movie grossed $527 million back in 2007 and the show continues to pull in strong ratings in its 26th season, it’s a huge surprise that we haven’t seen Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and the rest of Springfield back on the big screen.

Last year, as the show celebrated its 25th anniversary, James L. Brooks discussed the chances of a second movie, suggesting that there’d not really been any talk of a sequel; however, executive producer Al Jean has now revealed to EW that the January 4th episode ‘The Man Who Came to Be Dinner’ – which saw the family abducted by the aliens Kang and Kodos – almost served as the basis for The Simpsons Movie 2:

“Two of the allures were exploring the rules of the new world and the cinematic nature of doing something in space,” states Jean. “But then we were worried that people might think it’s an idea that’s not canonical—it doesn’t really happen, unlike all of other 560 episodes that really ‘happened’—so the ultimate decision was to air it as an episode,” Jean explains. “It just got to the point where if we were unsure about it as a movie, then it would be good to air the episode. And then if we do a movie, we’d just think of something else…. So if you want to know what was thought of a possible Simpsons Movie 2, we just aired it—for free. You can see it for free!”

Jean then went on to estimate the chances of a second Simpsons movie becoming a reality, stating that: “My guess it’s 50-50. Our feeling is that the first movie was pretty successful and we don’t want the second movie to be any less successful. And I’m not talking about financially only—I’m also talking about no one wants to do a movie where people think, ‘Why did they do that? It wasn’t necessary.’ We actually think of ideas for shorts more easily than for features. To be honest, there’s nothing that I’d say, ‘This is what we were thinking we would do if we did a feature.’”

So, if you were hoping for another big screen Simpsons outing, the outlook doesn’t seem too optimistic…