Boots Riley isn’t going to make us wait eight years for his next film, as he did between 2018’s Sorry to Bother You and I Love Boosters, which premieres at SXSW in a couple of months. Nope, he’s already got another film in the works, and it’s a wild one. Riley confirmed he’ll direct an adaptation of Anne Washburn’s stageplay Mr. Burns: A Post‑Electric Play, which reimagines the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons as a post-apocalyptic dark comedy.
Pretty crazy, right?
Mr. Burns actually debuted right here in DC at the Woolly Mammoth in 2013. The story takes place shortly after an apocalyptic event, where a group of six survivors try to recall episodes of The Simpsons, including the “Cape Feare” episode from season five in 1993. They form a traveling theatre company specializing in The Simpsons, as society desperately struggles to hold on to culture from before the apocalypse. In latter forms of “Cape Feare”, Mr. Burns is combined with Sideshow Bob and destroys Springfield in a nuclear meltdown, joined by his demonic sidekicks Itchy & Scratchy. He also sets out to murder all of the Simpsons clan.
Sounds exactly in Riley’s offbeat wheelhouse.
His next film, I Love Boosters, stars Naomi Ackie, Keke Palmer, Taylour Paige and Demi Moore. It will be released by NEON on May 22nd.
