comScore
  1. Mediaite
  2. Gossip Cop
  3. Geekosystem
  4. Styleite
  5. SportsGrid
  6. The Mary Sue
  7. The Jane Dough
  8. The Braiser

Meddling Kids

Fox Gets Movie Rights to Sesame Street

by Susana Polo | 2:50 pm, June 20th, 2012


Would you believe that Sesame Street has only had two theatrically released movies in its forty-three year history? 20th Century Fox is looking to change that, since they just acquired the movie license to the long-running children’s television show, and equipped the new production with a writer and producers.

Color us interested.

Well, academically, at least. The success of The Muppets left me half expecting something of this kind. It might be Muppets minutiae, but while the puppets on Sesame Street are created by the same folks who make Muppets, but they are not Muppets characters from a licensing standpoint. The Muppets currently belong to Disney, while the rights Sesame Street and its characters are controlled by Sesame Workshop, formerly the Children’s Television Workshop. So yeah, I’m not surprised at all that a movie studio like Fox, one of Disney’s biggest competitors, wants to make a movie featuring what muppets it can actually get its hands on.

Which is not to say I think this will be a travesty of epic proportions. Quite the contrary, the writer Fox has tapped for the script is Joey Mazzarino, twenty-two year veteran puppeteer and writer for Sesame Street. And knowing how tight Sesame Workshop is about depictions of its characters (for example, they continue a rule set down by Jim Henson restricting any Sesame Street character from appearing in advertising for toys and other retail items based on their likenesses), I’m going to assume that they’ve got the final say on pretty much everything about the movie.

No, the question I’m wondering idly about is whether or not I’ll enjoy the movie. The last Sesame Street movie came out in 1999, and followed Elmo as a main character. While I think Elmo’s pretty cute in reasonably sized doses, and have an intense love for the work of Kevin Clash, his puppeteer, he wasn’t around much during my childhood viewing of the show and doesn’t really do it for me as a nostalgic character. I’ll readily admit that there are a handful of characters in that picture above whose names completely elude me. Sesame Street‘s priority should be on connected with people who are kids today, not two decades ago.

But if I had to ask anything of the production, it would be that maybe, just maybe, somebody will finally tell us how to get there. I already live in New York, like, just give me a cross street.

TAGS: | | |


  • Anonymous

    As long as there is a lot of Grover I will be happy.

  • http://active-voice.net/beckyallen/ allreb

    I don’t know if it was a theatrical release, but man, “Follow That Bird” really upset me as a child.

    (And yep, having lived in NY for six years, I *still* get moments of “It looks just like Sesame Street!11″ sometimes.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000500177841 Rachel Banzhaf

    They should model it after the Avengers. Make some character-specific movies sure but the actual Sesame Street movie better be ensemble. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1780916799 Jennifer Dougherty

    It will be interesting to watch one branch of Fox promote the movie and another branch of Fox attack it.

  • Anonymous

    Some sort of Bert and Ernie love tryst should do the trick to make the whole organization implade >:-)

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1464804172 Michelle Chase Harvey

    There were two theatre releases (Follow that Bird and Elmo in Grouchland), but weren’t there two direct-to-tv movies? I remember something about a trip to China involving Barkley, and the other having to do with the MMoA and the ghost of a little Egyptian boy? It’s kind of fuzzy, going off my memory here.

  • http://twitter.com/IM_SH IMSH

    For some reason the song “One of These Things…” almost seems appropriate in this situation despite there are only two subjects on deck when there are usually four. However, if you look at it in the grand scheme, both subjects fall under the topic of talking puppets. Thus, my statements have created somewhat of a paradox.

  • http://roseeclipse.livejournal.com/ Rose Jones

    Really? “Follow that Bird” was part of my happy childhood. What part upset you? If it was seeing Big Bird crooning sadly while locked in a cage then that did make me sniffle unhappily. But when he manages to jump from one speeding car to the next, I recall bouncing up and down on the sofa screaming for joy.

    I also remember the VHS tape of “Don’t Eat the Pictures” when all of the Sesame Street characters were locked in the Metropolitan Museum of Art overnight and Big Bird met a 4,000 year old Egyptian prince. That was a pretty awesome movie.

  • http://active-voice.net/beckyallen/ allreb

     I was really upset by the whole idea of Big Bird being taken away from the people on Sesame Street who loved him in general, AND I found the dodos really upsetting because they were supposed to be responsible but they were weird and Big Bird was unhappy. AND the bit when he was painted blue and locked up, but also the fact that the people looking for him were SO CLOSE and just missed him. That kind of thing still really upsets me, honestly. (Though it’s been years, so my memories of these things may not actually be at all accurate, heh.)

    Wait wait wait, was that the one that featured a riddle about “where does yesterday meet tomorrow?” Because I remember that ONE LINE and almost nothing else, and no one else I’ve talked to has been able to ID what it was from but I swore up and down it was Sesame Street related.

  • http://roseeclipse.livejournal.com/ Rose Jones

    The riddle is “Where does today meet yesterday?” and yes, it is from Don’t Eat the Pictures.

X