According to press releases, audience members at The Simpsons panel can expect a sneak preview at the upcoming 20th Treehouse of Horror episode, “Treehouse of Horror XX”, along with further information regarding the 21st season of the show. Catch the panel at 1:45pm in ballroom 20.

Creator Matt Groening, showrunner Al Jean, executive producer Matt Selman and supervising director Mike Anderson will join some voice actors from the series at the panel.

Also due to appear at the convention is the cast behind the recently revived Futurama. This however contradicts the recent news that Fox is looking for an all-new cast for the show due to wage disagreements. Hopefully, all doubt and confusion will culminate at the panel tomorrow, when it preceeds The Simpsons panel at 1:00pm, also in ballroom 20.

A spokesperson for Britain’s The Islamic Cultural Centre & The London Central Mosque slammed the episode, telling UK newspaper the Daily Star, “I hope Muslims take no notice of the show.”

But Groening has come out in defence of the episode, saying, “Cartoons deal in stereotypes. We try to be sensitive.” It is not the first time the show has been mired in controversy, with Simpsons bosses recently criticised for a storyline which implied America’s Republican party was involved in a vote-rigging scandal at the 2008 presidential election.

The central issue in the case was whether a cartoon character could depict a real person. Judge Michael Adams decided that it could, and found a man from Sydney guilty of possessing child pornography.

He ruled that the animated cartoon could “fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of [actual] children,” and therefore upheld the conviction for child pornography.

Rather than jail the man, however, he fined him Aus$3,000 (US$2,000).

A UK man has been jailed for breaching the peace by singing Spiderpig from The Simpsons Movie at police officers. David Mullen was sentenced to three months for the incident and calling an officer “ginger” in a police van.

Mullen, 22, from Blairgowrie, claimed he was singing the ditty, performed by Homer in the cartoon, because it was the ringtone on his mobile phone. He was given a further eight months in prison for assaulting a police officer and breaching a curfew while on bail.

Mullen sang the song to officers on 25 July while sitting in the back of a police van after being involved in a fight in Blairgowrie, Perthshire. Solicitor Paul Ralph, defending, said: “He started the song and that was the origin of the joke, but things went further. He felt he had not done anything to be apprehended for.” Mullen breached his curfew on 30 October and assaulted a police officer on 2 November.

The Simpsons is just one of twelve shows which the Russian government believe to be extremist and harmful to children, calling for their removal from the channel after complaints from Russian religious fundamentalist groups. Roman Sarkisov, 2×2’s general director, announced that the channel would be appealing complaints against them via court. Unless these cases are won by the 2×2 channel, these shows will never resume.

“Family Guy”, “South Park”, MTV’s “Drawn Together” and “Angry Kid” will also be removed.

The cartoons “promote violence and cruelty, pornography, anti-social behavior, abound with scenes of mayhem, the infliction of physical and ethical suffering, and are aimed at invoking fear, panic and terror in children,” said the Russian prosecutors.

The channel has responded to the charges by gathering signatures in support of its broadcasts. The management has also received official approval to hold several demonstrations, and will hold a free concert to raise awareness of the issue in St. Petersburg on September 22nd.

BOOBIES! Offended? You shouldnt be. After all, the above imagery is more wholesome and less offensive than any episode of The Simpsons. At least, that’s the verdict in Venezuela, where Baywatch Hawaii will replace The Simpsons, which is being taken off the air because it may be inappropriate for children.

“It had to be taken off,” said Elba Guillen, spokesperson for the network which airs the series at 11am weekdays. “They consider it to be a series that isn’t appropriate for that time because it isn’t appropriate for children.” The regulatory agency didn’t specify which elements of the program were deemed offensive, but said showing the animated cartoon series at that hour could violate national regulations prohibiting “messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents.”

SOURCE: Yahoo

Prosecutor Chuan Ng said the movie was downloaded 3,213 times in the few hours it was available on the Internet. Duarte’s lawyer said Duarte tried twice to upload the movie July 26, the release date, several hours ahead of its appearance in most of the world. He thought he’d failed, said the lawyer, Ken Stewart.

“It would appear that this young man had the sophistication of a dead fish,” Stewart said. “I have sat and spent time with this young man, … and I am quite satisfied that he had no idea what he was doing.” Duarte pleaded guilty in a Sydney Magistrates Court Tuesday to a charge of distributing copyright material and was fined by 1,000 Australian dollars.

SOURCE: AP

EA’s forthcoming The Simpsons game parodies 30 years of videogaming and gaming IPs, but there are games companies that have refused to see the funny side of things. “I was always under the impression that when you do parody, it’s a sign of respect… If we make fun of Grand Theft Auto, we’re not going to hurt the sales of Grand Theft Auto… But yeah, we’ve definitely had some reactions – we’ve had to pull stuff from the game”, The Simpsons Game lead designer Greg Rizzer revealed to Computer & Video Games in an interview earlier this week.

“But that’s cool to me”, Rizzer continued. “It’s cool to still know, I feel, that the industry’s been waiting for a game like this to come along. It’s been too long since we really had one, and of course [there's] The Simpsons being the perfect vehicle to poke fun at the games industry.”

SOURCE: Computer & Video Games

The “Simpsons” copy was found before the film’s U.S. release July 27 and tracked back to a computer in western Sydney. AFACT alleges that the man arrested used his cell phone to film the movie at a cinema in western Sydney before uploading it on the Internet. Close international cooperation between the Australian Federal Police, AFACT and 20th Century Fox resulted in the removal of the unauthorized recording within 72 hours of its posting. But during that window the movie was uploaded to a U.S.-based global streaming site where it was viewed or downloaded more than 3,000 times.

AFACT additionally tracked it to other streaming sites and P2P systems where it had been illegally downloaded in excess of 110,000 times. Investigators even found a version of the film dubbed in French. Copies of “The Simpsons Movie” already are widely available on the street in China, though it is unclear if the Chinese copies came from the Australian upload.

SOURCE: Hollywood Reporter

In Entertainment Weekly for its Simpsons cover story that hits stands this Friday, O’Brien jokingly responds to a comment by current show runner Al Jean that he would have simply “laughed” off an invite to work on the movie, deadpanning: “I cleared my talk show schedule for a year at great financial cost to myself, got an apartment right outside the Fox lot, and told them I was ready to report to work. All I heard back was that they were having trouble finding me a parking space, and then they stopped returning my calls altogether. I am stunned and disappointed…. Truth be told, I worry that the Simpsons-writing portion of my brain has been destroyed after 14 years of talking to Lindsay Lohan and that guy from One Tree Hill, so maybe it’s all for the best.” This week’s EW has more details on Conan and the upcoming Simpsons Movie.

Update: Matt Groening can be seen on Conan O’Brien tonight!

SOURCE: Entertainment Weekly