If I am remembering my obscure entertainment stories correctly, one day Jim Henson sat down with his fellow writers and muppeteers and said something like “I want to make a show that brings about world peace,” and after the rest of the room had stopped laughing and realized he wasn’t joking, they created Fraggle Rock. In its five seasons it, more than any other Henson production to date, focused exclusively on exploring social issues like prejudice, care of the environment, spirituality, identity, conflict and tolerance. It was also a huge hit, airing internationally in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France and Germany.
A Fraggle Rock movie has been in various states of preproduction since 2005. In 2008, the Weinstein Company entered into a deal to distribute it, which expired last year even as it was announced that the Scissor Sisters were down to write the show’s music… without much else to show that a movie really was being made. But! New developments indicate that the adaptation might not be as dead as all that.
The Hollywood Reporter, ah, reports that Jim Byrkit and Alex Manugian have been tapped to deliver a script for a Fraggle Rock movie, and their previous work, Byrkit’s in particular, seems suited to the task. Byrkit shared a co-writing credit on Rango, which whatever else it was, was deliciously weird, in that way that makes you wonder what age, exactly, the movie was meant for. It also had something of a pro-environment anti-industrialization message as well as a (somewhat clumsier) finding your own identity message and a working together despite our differences message. All things squarely within the core themes of Fraggle Rock.
Manugian served as an executive in charge of production for Cartoon Network in the late ’00s, including on Tom Kenny‘s kid friendly but Mad Magazine-esque Plastic Man shorts, another influence that could serve a Fraggle Rock adaptation well.
Lets hope this one gets off the ground.
(via The Hollywood Reporter.)
