The New Simpsons Movie Logo Ditches The Donut, And Fans Noticed Immediately

Nearly twenty years. That’s how long Springfield’s finest sat out of movie theaters entirely, and the logo that finally broke that silence is doing more talking than a title card usually does.

Disney and 20th Century Studios used D23’s Ultimate Fan Event to confirm the sequel everyone’s half-expected for years: The New Simpsons Movie. Title’s blunt on purpose. No dramatic subtitle, no clever wordplay, just the plain self-awareness the show’s run on for decades. Release date: September 3, 2027, aimed right at the Labor Day weekend.

Here’s where it gets interesting, though. The logo.

Visually, a lot stays familiar. That yellow “SIMPSONS” lettering’s still front and center, instantly recognizable from across a mall food court. Above it, a slightly askew red banner spelling “NEW,” stacked on top like a sticker slapped onto packaging that hasn’t changed much otherwise. Playful. A little chaotic. Very on-brand.

But the real talking point isn’t the banner.

It’s what’s missing.

2007’s Simpsons Movie famously swapped the “O” in “MOVIE” for one of Homer’s pink-frosted donuts. Genuinely one of the more memorable pieces of movie branding from that whole era. Instantly recognizable, perfectly tied to the character, meme-able before “meme” was even the word people reached for.

The new logo drops it. Standard “O.” No donut in sight anywhere.

Fans noticed within minutes, and reactions split pretty evenly — mild disappointment on one side, genuine curiosity about the decision on the other. Cutting something this beloved feels less like an oversight and more like a choice a self-aware show makes on purpose, fully expecting the internet to have opinions about it.

Whether that’s a tonal signal, a cleaner visual identity going forward, or just a wink acknowledging the franchise doesn’t need the same gag twice — Disney hasn’t said. Maybe that’s the point.

Good comparison here, actually. Dunkin’ has built a massive chunk of its entire identity around donuts and coffee, to the point where the food basically functions as an extension of the branding regardless of whatever typography they’re running that year. Homer’s donut did the exact same job for the original movie — food doing double duty as logo, communicating character before anyone read a word. Pulling it now, on the sequel specifically, is a genuinely bold call for a franchise that leaned so hard on that exact gag the first time around.

Beyond the logo, Disney showed a little actual footage too, though a full public trailer stayed under wraps. Disney Entertainment CCO Dana Walden took the stage next to an animated Bart Simpson and walked through a raw, early-production sequence — storyboards, rough color layers, not finished animation. Unusually candid for a studio this size, this early.

The sequence itself: Homer chasing a runaway baseball across Springfield landmarks, path eventually leading straight toward the Duff Brewery, half the town joining the chase behind him. Vintage Simpsons chaos, basically, whatever the finished animation pipeline ends up looking like.

Showrunners reportedly joked that showing footage this early wasn’t the plan, but Bart “left them no choice.” Cute framing, whether or not it’s accurate to what actually happened in the room.

The twenty-year gap matters here too, context-wise. The original became a genuine global box-office phenomenon in 2007, and theatrical follow-up talks reportedly stalled more than once over the years, including delays tied to early-2020s production issues. This year’s full D23 pavilion reveal effectively signals the sequel’s actually moving now, real momentum behind it, instead of sitting in perpetual “maybe someday” limbo the way it seemed to for a while.

There’s also something worth noting about the risk of a title this literal. “The New Simpsons Movie” isn’t a name built for mystery or intrigue — it’s built to say exactly what it is, no more, no less, trusting the brand alone to sell tickets rather than a clever hook. That’s a confident move for a franchise this old, betting that thirty-plus years of cultural saturation does more heavy lifting than a catchy subtitle ever could. Plenty of legacy franchises would’ve reached for something punchier. The Simpsons just shrugged and went with the obvious answer, which, honestly, feels exactly right for a show built on not taking itself too seriously.

Whether losing the donut ends up as a minor footnote or a genuinely significant shift in how this film wants to be read probably won’t be clear until the full marketing rollout ramps up over the next several months. But for a franchise built almost entirely on self-aware humor and constant subversion of its own tropes, quietly swapping out one of its most beloved visual gags reads less like an accident and a lot more like the actual punchline.