Thursday, July 14, 2005

What's next for the Muppets?

Chris Curtin, the head of the Muppets Holding Company at Disney, gave a presentation at the National Fantasy Fan Club convention about the future of the Muppets. Chris shared a lot of great information on what’s next for the Muppets. Here are just some upcoming events fans can look forward to.

  • "The Muppet Show: Season One" DVD box set will hit stores in August, and other four seasons are planned to follow.
  • "The Muppets Wizard of Oz" will be released on DVD and VHS in August.
  • The Muppets are working on a six-episode "reality" series titled "America's Next Muppet".
  • A brand new Muppet holiday special is planned to air on TV in December.
  • Disney has plans to release an all new Muppet Christmas album later this year.
  • Next year there will be a TV special in honor of Kermit's 50th anniversary in show business, with Miss Piggy hosting a celebrity roast for the frog.
  • The Muppets will make occasional celebrity appearances on Disney Cruise ships.
  • The Muppets will be involved in the Super Bowl promotion in January.
  • The Muppets are in talks with officials in Orlando to bring the Muppets into the Disney theme parks with an all new live show.
  • New feature films, TV-specials, TV shows, DVD and CD releases (and re-releases) are also in consideration by Disney.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The "reality" TV series was already taped last year, so this doesn't impress me.

The Muppet Show DVD is just legacy stuff, so that's not overly impressive.

The Wizard of Oz show was a ratings failure (waits for onslaught of spin doctoring of mediocre-to-poor ratings), so the DVD is there to recoup their losses. The movie itself wasn't anything special. Not impressive.

Muppet holiday special - With the Disney Muppet's track record...Who knows? I'll give them the benefit of the doubt & write that this is a good thing.

TV special "Kermit Roast" - Again, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. However, this isn't even a story like the "Wizard of Oz" was.

Everything else that was specifically mentioned is not entirely impressive.

Nothing breeds success like good storytelling displayed often. Give the Muppets over to someone who knows how to make good Muppet properties & keep the Mouse's PC antics out.

Anonymous said...

I give this anoymous guy a kick in the pants if he keeps being so negative.

Anonymous said...

Word on the street is that they scrapped the reality series taped last year and are going with a new reailty concept.