Weinsteins Distribute Fraggle Rock
Jim Henson Company Revives 80's Show With Hoodwinked's Corey Edwards
May 13, 2008
The Weinstein Company and The Jim Henson Company have teamed up to bring the 1980's television series Fraggle Rock to the big screen.
According to Variety, Corey Edwards (Hoodwinked!) has been tapped to write and direct the feature, about a group of creatures who live in tunnels, eat Doozer architecture, call the human world "Outer Space," and humans the "Silly Creatures." Like the original series, there will be several musical numbers in the movie.
Rock star spawn Ahmet Zappa will executive produce the feature film, along with Brian Inerfeld.
Just like the original television series, which ran from 1983 to 1987, the movie will feature a mix of live-action and Henson puppetry (don't call them Muppets!). The Jim Henson Company will produce the flick, which The Weinstein Company will distribute.
The Weinstein Company making more family movies
After the success of Hoodwinked and TMNT, combined with the highly expensive crash-and-burn that was Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez' Grindhouse, it's not surprising that The Weinstein Company are moving more aggressively into the family-film arena. TWC is also getting Edwards to hook up with his Hoodwinked! co-writer Tony Leech on the animated alien adventure Escape From Planet Earth, a film in which Leech makes his directing debut.
The first three seasons of the original Fraggle Rock series sold very well on DVD, which means there's still a strong fanbase in place for a possible feature-length film.
What's a Fraggle Rock?
Fraggle Rock was Jim Henson's follow-up to his smash hit The Muppet Show, which ended its run in 1981. Because movies like The Dark Crystal weren't the box office smashes Henson had hoped they would be, he created another family-oriented series to bankroll his feature-length films. It was a co-production between the now defunct Television South (TVS), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Home Box Office (HBO) and Henson Associates (now Jim Henson Productions).
The new series made its debut in 1983 and was an instant success, running for 5 years and 96 episodes, and broadcast in 80 different countries. The catchy theme song also developed its own life, reaching #33 on the British pop charts.
The Fraggles were humanoid creatures, about 22 inches tall, that lived in tunnels and ate radish-derived food products. The series followed the adventures of the level-headed Gobo (animated by Jerry Nelson), the optimistic and artistic Mokey (Kathryn Mullen), the exuberant Red (Karen Prell), the indecisive Wembley (Steve Whitmire), and the hypochondriac Boober (Dave Goelz). They lived in tunnels under Fraggle Rock, and considered the human world "Outer Space."
Despite Henson's ostensible desire to make a colourful and fun series that was more child-oriented than The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock also contained complex messages about how everything in our world was interconnected, and that people were unaware of how reliant they were on other species. One of the show's strengths was its refusal to simplify complex issues, tackling everything from prejudice, spirituality, personal identity, environment, to social conflict.
There's no word on when a Fraggle Rock movie will hit theatres, but don't look for it before 2010.
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