Merchandise news and other info about The Muppets and Jim Henson's creations.
"Along with the board game we will be releasing some collectible figurines sculpted by Johnny, which can of course be used in the game.
These figurines will be well known characters from the Labyrinth. I won't spoil the surprise by telling you which, but here is a peek at one of them.
"The song 'Chilly Down' from Labyrinth was originally called 'The Wild Things' but because of a copyright issue with the name, the characters were renamed 'The Fireys' and the song renamed 'Chilly Down'."
“SPLASH (w.t.) will engage and educate young viewers by presenting the novelty of the ‘strange-but-true’ world of the ocean with humor and music. Funny, character-driven songs will reinforce the show’s learning goals, helping kids build key skills as they sing along with their underwater friends.”Tweet this
"So Up Late will become more of a variety show?
It's more of a Jimmy Fallon-style late-night show where there are bits and sketches. We won't be doing sketches straight out of 1979, but we may be doing some of them updated. We're doing an updated Veterinarian's Hospital, we're doing an updated Swedish Chef where Bunsen is helping him do molecular gastronomy. We're taking some of the inspiration from a lot of the old stuff and trying to think about how would Fallon do it? How would [Jimmy] Kimmel do it? And getting to see the Muppets being zany and not just being guys who are having a hard time at work but also getting to perform and do silly things.
There are moments from different things, but mostly it's the spirit I'm looking to for inspiration: joy and friendship; Muppets take care of each other; Muppets root for each other, even if Muppets drive each other crazy and get in each other's way. Muppets, at the end of the day, love each other. So that's what I try to make every single decision based on. I walked into the writers' room on my first day and wrote the word "joy" on the wall. That's what I'm trying to make every decision based on. What's the most joyful moment we can have here? What's the most fun we can have here? Let's let them do what humans can't do because they're puppets and they're silly. Just because they live in a human world doesn't mean they have to act like humans. Let's enjoy and play with what they can do.
What they were doing a lot, was having the celebrity guest of the week create the conflict. What that was doing was creating A stories among celebrity guests that took so much screen time away from the Muppets, who everybody tuned in to see. I'm using guest cast a lot more as cameos and trying to up the amount of musical guests we get so that if somebody comes on who can sing an incredible piece of music, we can use that to emotionally help a story finish .
Camilla will be coming back for Gonzo.
Lew Zealand will be throwing some fish around.. there will be a baby penguin coming into the show.
Foo-foo will be around more.
Also, Robin is coming back. We're breaking the finale now, but the idea is that we're having a Muppet reunion, so we're going to be bringing a lot of characters back.
For the finale, I'm going to have a lot of the beloved Muppets that all the fans and performers have really been missing come back for the last show. We're going to have some cameos of old Muppets that haven't been around a lot. I'm really trying to spread the focus as far as story goes onto all of the core characters that we've been seeing so far."Wow, I mean talk about about taking our suggestions to, um well heart! (Now if only
I'm bringing in a human bad guy who will, I hope, be used to unite the Muppets fighting against him — instead of fighting against Piggy and fighting against each other. The human threat is obviously from the network because they work on a TV show. He is a branding guru named Pache — played by [recurring guest] Utkarsh Ambudkar (The Mindy Project, Pitch Perfect) and he has rebranded warlords and network presidents and he has a lot of slick ideas and it's all about new, new, new and slick, slick, slick, which is not The Muppets. The Muppets are all about joy and zaniness and heart and the way that they have to fight this bad guy is by binding together. They're going to bring the people who have been backstage on Up Late With Miss Piggy, doing more sketches and bits and bringing more joy back to her show.It'll be interesting to see how he and Denise will interact since she's in charge of marketing for the network.
The character of Jareth was originally meant to be another puppet creature in the same vein as his goblin subjects, but Jim Henson eventually decided he wanted a big, charismatic star to the play the Goblin King, and decided to pursue a musician for the role. Sting, Prince, Mick Jagger, and Michael Jackson were considered for the part; however, it was ultimately decided that David Bowie would be the most suitable choice.
"I wanted to put two characters of flesh and bone in the middle of all these artificial creatures," Henson explained, "and David Bowie embodies a certain maturity, with his sexuality, his disturbing aspect, all sorts of things that characterize the adult world." Henson met David Bowie in the summer of 1983 to seek his involvement, and continued to pursue Bowie for the role of Jareth, and sent him each revised draft of the film's script for his comments. During a meeting that took place on June 18, 1984, Henson showed Bowie The Dark Crystal and a selection of Brian Froud's concept drawings to pique his interest in the project. Bowie formally agreed to take part on February 15, 1985, several months before filming began.
Discussing why he chose to be involved in the film, Bowie explained that "I'd always wanted to be involved in the music-writing aspect of a movie that would appeal to children of all ages, as well as everyone else, and I must say that Jim gave me a completely free hand with it. The script itself was terribly amusing without being vicious or spiteful or bloody, and it had a lot more heart in it than many other special effects movies. So I was pretty hooked from the beginning."
