Muppet Season 2 DVD
box set supposed to come in late summer 2007
UPDATE: The photo on the right is DEFINITELY the new cover art for The Muppet Show Season 2. According to Muppet Newsflash, the 4-disc set will contain all 24 episodes of Season 2. The disc art will feature Kermit and Piggy (disc 1), Waldorf and Statler (disc 2), Bunsen and Beaker (disc 3) and Fozzie and Gonzo (guess).
Of course there's no release date set (^#%&@!!!), but Disney's talking late summer, definitely before the end of the year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've heard that one before.
(Source: muppetnewsflash.blogspot.com)
Rumours of The Muppet Show Season 2 coming to DVD have been flying around for the past two years with everyone wondering when Disney’s gonna put the damn thing out already. The Season One DVD sold like a mofo, so executives know that there’s plenty of gold in them thar The Muppet Show hills. There have been no shortage of announcements of a release date, but no actual date. I got caught out at least twice predicting that Season 2 was coming to DVD shelves sometime late in 2006. Now we’re 4 months into 2007, and nada.
So you can imagine my skepticism when Muppet Newsflash claimed the Season 2 DVD is coming “soon.” According to the site, there’s a trailer for the Season 2 DVD in the Dinosaurs: Complete Third and Fourth Seasons box set, which hits stores May 1st. Disney touts a “late summer” release for this DVD. Unfortunately, there’s no specific release date mentioned in the ad, which leads me to believe that this is another stop-gap measure. Disney wants all those Muppet fans to sit tight while the Mouse House gets it in gear and brings Season 2 out.
So what’s the big hold-up?
A little digging led me to an article on Jim Hill’s site, which talks about the fact that years of internal Disney politics hampered any attempts to develop the Muppets. This is especially strange, because the Mouse House spent a long time (and wads of money) trying to get Kermit and company under its corporate wing.
The Mouse House only scored the Muppets in 2004. Then-CEO Michael Eisner handed control of the new Muppet Holdings LLC over to one of his most trusted associates, Chris Curtin. Unfortunately, Curtin’s clout within Disney took a massive beating when Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold tossed Eisner out of the CEO’s office later that year.
Despite that, Curtin managed to green-light The Muppets' Wizard of Oz TV movie, unveil Muppet.com and get Kermit and crew an appearance on the Christmas 2004 episode of Saturday Night Live. Curtin also realized that many creative types in Hollywood wanted to assist in a Muppets revival, including (according to rumour) a certain co-creator of The Simpsons.
Curtin envisioned an all-out promo storm, marketing the Muppets as “hip and edgy.” That meant selling Muppet-themed t-shirts at Fred Segal stores, and coming up with a lavish celebration of Kermit the Frog’s 50th birthday, which would have sent the amphibian on an around-the-world trip.
Before this could happen, CEO Robert Iger promoted Curtin out of Muppet Holdings, replacing him with Russell Hampton. Hampton’s attitude was that the Muppets were only there to make the Mouse House money and lots of it. On the one hand, that meant The Muppet Show Season One DVD came out on his watch. On the other hand, Hampton got Kermit promoting the Ford Escape Hybrid, and tried developing the American Idol retread, America’s Next Muppet.
ABC wasn’t happy about promoting the Muppets, mainly because several merchandising deals the Jim Henson Company signed (prior to selling the Muppets to Disney) have yet to expire. That means that there’s not a lot of money that Disney Consumer Goods can make off the Muppets. That doomed America’s Next Muppet.
Disney also licensed the Muppets to French language station TFI, which developed Muppet TV. However, due to some questionable management decisions, Muppet TV never really caught on and TFI opted not to renew. However, Disney wasn’t complaining, since Muppet Holdings was again in a transitional period. In May of 2006, Hampton became the new president of Disney Publishing. In his place came Lylle Breier who, according to Hill, is an ardent fan of the Muppets (so is Disney chairman Dick Cook). The first thing she did was to change the name from Muppet Holding to Muppet Studios.
Breier also set up a few concepts: one is a possible The Office-like show about Muppets living and working in Hollywood. Bill Prady (Gilmore Girls, Dharma and Greg) developed the idea and put together a 10-minute presentation reel back in January. No word has yet come down on what Disney executives think of the project.
At the same time, Breier resurrected The Muppet Show character Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and his hapless assistant Beaker, and put them in the “Muppet Mobile Lab,” as part of Disney’s Living Character Initiative. Unfortunately, while most bystanders loved the show, most of them couldn’t ID the characters as classic Muppet characters, or remember their names. Needless to say, Disney has a long way to go in order to return the Muppets to their mid-1970's popularity.
Will Breier restore some calm to Muppet Studios? Will we ever see a Season 2 DVD? Stay tuned.
