The Muppets

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by EricJ » September 19th, 2012, 11:47 pm

It's the 30th Anniversary this year (I feel old... :( ), and Disney has the character rights, if not the video rights--
Disney had been trying to resurrect the Rockers for a new movie, until they cut their losses and staked the entire studio on Kermit & co. instead. Now that that seems to have, ahem, worked out, looks like they're putting out early signals for going ahead with the old project memos.

(Although I sort of hate to admit...one of the reasons we all liked the show was that it was back when the concept of "Preschool cable" didn't exist yet, so we thought it was just "the Muppet Show sequel". Looking at it today, it's sort of hard to balance what we know now with what we didn't know then.)

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by Ben » September 20th, 2012, 3:54 am

It's been said before and again...Disney doesn't own anything of Fraggle Rock. But I do agree that this feels like warm-up to something bigger.

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by EricJ » September 20th, 2012, 4:08 am

Ben wrote:It's been said before and again...Disney doesn't own anything of Fraggle Rock. But I do agree that this feels like warm-up to something bigger.
HIT/Lionsgate owns the video rights to the show, but as a Jim Henson Production, pretty sure Disney has the marketing and character rights.
And Lisa Henson at Disney's movie arm was working on a Fraggle movie ("In search of Uncle Matt"), around the same pre-"Muppets" time as they were trying to get that Dark Crystal sequel funded, but neither old-property project could get out of limbo.

As for why BF5 would "suddenly" do a video with the characters in time for the 30th-anniversary marketing...it's awfully darn coincidental, seeing as Disney knows one of the three things most kids remember the Kermit & Co. Muppets for today is appearing in a Weezer video.
(That, and the Fraggles don't know the words to "Bohemian Rhapsody", have never seen "Hangover II", and wouldn't know how to build a house. :wink: )

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by Ben » September 20th, 2012, 5:46 am

Disney bought "The Muppets", they did not buy "The Jim Henson Company" which still owns and operates Fraggle Rock, Storyteller, Dark Crystal, etc...

Here's their very own company statement, as of September 12 2012:
About The Jim Henson Company:

The Jim Henson Company has remained an established leader in family entertainment for over 50 years and is recognized worldwide as an innovator in puppetry, animatronics and digital animation. Best known as creators of the world famous Muppets, Henson has received over 50 Emmy Awards and nine Grammy Awards. Recent credits include the Emmy® nominated "Sid the Science Kid," and "Dinosaur Train" as well as "Wilson & Ditch: Digging America" and "Pajanimals." Features include "The Dark Crystal," "Labyrinth," "MirrorMask," and "Unstable Fables" and television productions include "Fraggle Rock" and the sci-fi cult series "Farscape."

With additional locations in New York and London, The Jim Henson Company is headquartered in Los Angeles on the historic Charlie Chaplin lot, complete with soundstage and postproduction facilities. Independently owned and operated by the five adult children of founder Jim Henson, the Company is also home to Jim Henson's Creature Shop™, a pre-eminent character-building and visual effects group with international film, television and advertising clients, as well as Henson Recording Studios, one of the music industry's top recording facilities known for its world-class blend of state-of-the-art and vintage equipment. The Company's Henson Alternative brand has recently launched the national tour of "Stuffed and Unstrung," a live puppet improvisational show named one of the top 10 "Best Stage Shows of 2010" by Entertainment Weekly.
Notice their reference to the Muppets, but then no mention of The Muppet Show or any of the films? That's because Disney owns those characters (Sesame Street is again its own thing, now controlled by the Sesame Workshop).

Note the website: http://henson.com - many Fraggles, no Muppets.

Because of their history, Disney and the Henson Co do collaborate (hence why Lisa may have been at Disney developing Fraggles, though I don't remember that), but only in the way many other companies do: Disney doesn't own Henson Co or any of their non-Muppet characters, which is why Henson Co has to be careful, for example in developing No Strings Attached, to say Jim created the Muppets (that's a fact, it's true) but they can't say the show will feature the Muppets (even if the puppets do end up looking like new Muppets, they can't be called Muppets because Disney owns that name).

You're right about the new music video though: that's just one of the many things the company has in the pipeline to promote the 30th anniversary. It's as simple as that but easy to get confused. :)

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by Dacey » December 9th, 2016, 6:04 pm

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift--that is why it's called the present."

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by ShyViolet » April 8th, 2018, 1:51 pm

Short video interview with Frank Oz on why he thinks Disney is mishandling the Muppets:


https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/life/fr ... vp-BBKx3kr
You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by EricJ » April 8th, 2018, 7:29 pm

ShyViolet wrote:Short video interview with Frank Oz on why he thinks Disney is mishandling the Muppets:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/life/fr ... vp-BBKx3kr
Steve "Rizzo" Whitmire was already fired/"departed" from the company for being too vocal about the mistakes the Disney movies and the misfired ABC series were making in trying to appeal to an "edgy, adult" baby-boomer humor, and losing the innocence of their family appeal.
And while Frank's been away for a while, he still stays vocal about what the new owners are doing that the old owners knew enough not to do. When he says that the new producers don't get the, quote, "rebellion" of the old classic Muppets, he may be the only experienced vet still around to know what that means.

----
One factor--coming from a strange enough place--that might reflect the mentality that went into Jason Segel's Disney-Muppet movie, and the whole "Swedish Chef sings Nirvana" YouTube promotion of pairing the Muppets with old culty pop-references, may have been explained if you've watched Netflix's recent "MST3K: the Return" revival: Classic 70's Muppet Show pop-cultural references are all freakin' over the series, at least a dozen per episode.

Partly it may have to do with in-jokes about doing a "puppet show" in the 10's, but I think there's another factor at play--Ask Millennials to say what was wrong with 70's TV, and you'll hear dozens of kitschy references to "their parents' days" of Charlie's Angels or Fonzie jumping the shark, etc...But ask them what was good about 70's TV, and they don't know enough to name Carol Burnett, or Mary Tyler Moore, or MASH, they name only one thing. Kermit the Frog is no longer the symbol of a show or a franchise, he's become the symbol of a DECADE, on those rare occasions when you don't want to say anything bad about it. Apart from Star Wars, of course, or that one time the Star Wars characters showed up on the Muppet Show.
And why is the "one good show" of the decade remembered? Well, A) if you were alive in the 70's, it was the only thing you were probably old enough to remember watching besides cartoons, and B) if you weren't alive in the 70's, you didn't grow up watching the Kojak Christmas Carol on DVD every year. :lol:

That's probably why half the jokes of Segel's first Disney-Muppet movie--that the ABC series took its lead from--were about the Muppets as "Glorious icons from the 70's!...They're coming BACK, so that we can enjoy them as ADULTS!"
And why most of the real former and current Muppet performers were not happy and very vocal about the original script treating the characters like kitschy cultural relics that had been on the skids for thirty years.

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by ShyViolet » July 15th, 2018, 7:10 pm

Great news about Fraggle Rock on Blu-Ray. That was such a wonderful show. I’m pretty sure I saw it in its first run, when it started on HBO I think. Made a huge impression on me.

(Opening theme)

https://youtu.be/KLQS6xo40kI



I remember the cartoon coming a few years later, on NBC I think. (God it feels weird to talk about TV networks and Saturday Morning again! Lol. :) )


(Cartoon opening theme)


https://youtu.be/TwEx5tZy4S8
You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by Daniel » May 18th, 2019, 4:40 pm

This is pretty cool, see the current Muppet Babies as actual Muppets.

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by Ben » May 18th, 2019, 5:15 pm

Pretty much like how they looked in The Muppets Take Manhattan...?

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by Randall » May 18th, 2019, 6:28 pm

Yeah, they were real puppets in the first place. But I guess these are the "new" versions. Not being an expert, they look much as they did before, with a new character?

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by Daniel » May 19th, 2019, 12:23 pm

They look a little brighter and more colorful, with a few tweaks here and there. There's also the addition of Animal. He wasn't part of the dream sequence:



Though he was included in the original show.

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by Daniel » September 19th, 2019, 8:01 pm

Ahoy Mateys, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day and the Muppets made a video for the occasion:



Cute. Joe the Legal Weasel, eh? He's funny. I like him. Finally a face to that D23 tease.

Not to takeaway from the vid, I'm still not liking Kermit's new voice. I guess you could say he's got the delivery down pat... though he doesn't have Kermit's voice at all. Misses the mark. He lacks that unique back of the throat Kermit-esqe trait. He just sounds off, like he has a cold. Although it sounds like there's a hint of Jim? I don't know, Matt didn't sound that bad initially... argh. :(

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by Ben » September 20th, 2019, 2:47 am

Why are pirates called pirates?

Because they arr! :lol:


Matt's better here than he was at the Muppet live show last year, though he still sounds too swarmy, almost like "fake Kermit" Phil in The Muppets Take Manhattan, and he hasn’t got Mr The Frog's walk right at all. Far too fast and "hoppy"...Kermit has a much more laid back walk.

Still, I will always be pleased to see the characters being used and kept alive.

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Re: The NEW Muppet Movie

Post by Daniel » September 20th, 2019, 4:05 pm

I thought he sounded more Kermit-y last year, especially when he sung. It's a noticeable difference. Very distracting. Doesn't help that projects are so sporadic... though I mainly focus on the voice, I did notice his motion as well. Needs to capture the spirit more.

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