Disney has enlisted scribe-thesp Jason Segel and helmer Nick Stoller to create the next Muppet movie for the studio.
Segel and Stoller will write the script and Stoller will direct.
Segel, who graduated from Apatow-produced skeins "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" got his first sole writing credit on the Apatow-produced "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Universal releases the pic, which Stoller directed, on April 18.
In "Sarah Marshall" Segel's character writes a "Dracula" musical performed by puppets. Those cloth creatures were custom-made by the Henson puppeteers, and the experience emboldened Segel to pitch his concept for a Muppets movie when he was invited in for a general meeting with exec Kristin Burr. Segel got a deal in the room and enlisted Stoller to co-write and direct the project.
Then, those subterranean hippies are headed for their first big screen treatment.
The Weinstein Co. will turn the Jim Henson series "Fraggle Rock" into a live-action musical feature.
Cory Edwards, who directed the animated "Hoodwinked!" for TWC, will helm the picture and write the screenplay. The Jim Henson Co. will produce and TWC will distribute.
Just like the series, the film will be populated by a mix of human characters and Fraggle Rock puppets. TWC co-chair Harvey Weinstein, who has been steering his company more aggressively into the family film arena, made the marriage with Lisa Henson, who runs JHC with her co-CEO brother, Brian Henson.
Ahmet Zappa will be exec producer with Brian Inerfeld.
Pic will take the core characters Gobo, Wembley, Mokey, Boober and Red outside of their home in Fraggle Rock, where they interact with humans, which they think are aliens. The show premiered on HBO in 1983, ran five seasons and was broadcast in more than 80 countries. It posted strong sales recently when the first three seasons were released on DVD.
The deal furthers the relationship between TWC and the "Hoodwinked!" creative team. Edwards is reteaming with "Hoodwinked!" co-writer Tony Leech on the animated alien adventure "Escape From Planet Earth," on which Leech is making his directing debut.
Edwards is separately developing a live-action feature adaptation of Cedar Fair's Halloween Haunt franchise, designed to be shot in 3-D by Kerner Optical and produced by Davis Entertainment, Dave Phillips and Tracey Edmonds. That pic is looking for a backer.
"One of our main priorities when we first launched the Weinstein Company was to feature a broad range of family-friendly franchises like 'Fraggle Rock,' " Weinstein said.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
The Muppets are hardly moribund, but they do represent one of the most striking examples of franchise fumbling in Hollywood history.
“The Muppet Show” made its debut on CBS stations in 1976, introducing the classic characters Disney owns today. (The Muppet characters that populated the inaugural season of “Saturday Night Live” a year earlier were different.) “The Muppet Show” was full of song-and-dance numbers and skits, often featuring absurdist humor, along with backstage antics. Dancing chickens were thrown in for good measure.
Witty, somewhat subversive dialogue and the hilarious-looking Muppets themselves quickly won audiences over. The show, which ran for five seasons, at one point was syndicated in 100 countries. The ubiquitous franchise spawned hit movies (“The Muppet Movie”), hit songs (“The Rainbow Connection”), loads of merchandise and, eventually, an animated series called “Muppet Babies.”
But those glory days are long gone. After Henson’s death from a rare bacterial infection, at 53, in 1990 his five children took control of the company. They set about working on new adventures for the Muppets — but not before dragging them into a nasty court fight with Disney over terms for a Muppet attraction Henson had completed for Walt Disney World. And the franchise’s pop-cultural resonance slipped; the last Muppets movie, “Muppets From Space,” sputtered at the box office in 1999.
Meanwhile Henson loyalists like the performer and puppeteer Frank Oz publicly criticized aspects of Disney’s stewardship. Allowing Miss Piggy to serve as a Pizza Hut pitchwoman in a Super Bowl commercial created a major dust-up among fans, even though Henson himself was overtly commercial. (The piano-playing dog Rowlf was created in 1962 to sell Purina Dog Chow.) And family members have at times been frustrated at what they saw as Disney’s lack of focus.
Dick Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios and Ms. Breier’s boss, attributed the pace to the scale of Disney’s plans. “Developing the kind of high-quality entertainment we have planned for the global relaunch of the Muppets takes time,” he said.
Gently attaching the Muppets to today’s touchstone issues — healthy living, the environment — is one way Disney hopes to make them more relevant to the young and the trend conscious. Hence Miss Piggy’s donning of workout gear and Kermit’s recent appearance on ESPN (yet another Disney outpost) chatting with athletes about being environmentally friendly.
At the same time maintaining the core DNA of the characters is crucial, so as not to alienate an older generation with warm memories from their own childhoods.
“We want to be very, very careful that whatever we do is in the spirit of the Muppets and that we are enhancing the brand,” Mr. Cook said.
The new Muppet film, for instance, will be geared to a broad audience, but Disney understands the need it to retain an adult sensibility. Mr. Cook hired the team behind the raunchy comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” Jason Segel (the writer and star) and Nicholas Stoller (the director), to deliver the script.
I have to wonder: could the fact that the Muppets are having a problem with "their" comeback be based on the fact that neither Jim Henson nor Frank Oz are working on it? Isn't it possible that the appeal of the characters came directly from the creative vision of those two guys?
Henson wanted this. He sold out years ago. He didn't donate the characters to charity, he was a very smart creative person as well as business person. He saw all of this coming and too the $. There is nothing dishonorable in that.
The Muppets have been reduced to appearing on Disney Channel specials with... :shudder: Hannah Montana.
Jim Henson's spinning in his grave so rapidly that he's being tapped as a new energy source.
While Henson was alive he had them appear with celebrities on the Tonight Show, SNL and various specials, such as "John Denver's Christmas with the Muppets".
In fact, their 1970s variety show featured appearances each week from various big name celebrities of the day: Elton John, Johnny Cash, Steve Martin, Sylvester Stallone, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, and Paul Simon, not mention "B" listers like Jim Nabors, Florence Henderson, Ruth Buzzi and Jaye P. Morgan.
If you really think that Henson wouldn't be commercializing them or putting them in shows with people like Hannah Montanna if he were alive today, you obviously know nothing about him or his work.
