Eisner confirms Disney could buy Henson and Muppets soon

[danielromens]

Sorry but I almost forgot,

Yeah I can't wait for Disney to start cranking out attrocious Muppet dolls like the ones the sell for Muppets 3D.

Ugh.

 

[frogboy4]

alorindanya

Do you have an online link to this catalog? I'm interested to see how much Roger stuff they have. Probably very little, but who knows?

 

[Chilly Down]

Daniel,

"He wants to rejuvenate the company by expanding into more forms of entertainment besides puppetry"

I don't remember reading that in any of the articles. Can you expand on what he said?

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Why should we have Henson productions that are just generic sitcoms or cop shows without Muppets in them, or have all the resources devoted towards non-Muppet cartoons rather than straight Muppet productions?

 

[frogboy4]

It's always good to diversify and Farscape proved that they can do things aside from puppets. There were a couple of puppet characters, but the program could have done just as well without them. Actually, some think they hindered the show. I liked them from what I've seen.

Since projects are individual, I don't see it as an either/or proposition. Each production can only get so much money, and Disney has buckets of it. I wouldn't like to see the Muppets take a backseat to anything. I think that under Disney, more work can be done on a variety of things. At least I hope so (if the sale goes through). I'm pretty sure it will.

 

[Luke]

I don't think Disney would use Henson to diversify beyond puppetry much - why bother - they can do it themselves in-house and they aren't going to have the Creature Shop to do effects or animatronics, which if they had, things would be way different. I pretty much see Henson being stripped down a bit and becoming Disney's "puppetry" division if they're lucky - i certainly don't see any animation happening. Henson's non-Muppet productions are at an all time low right now, lots of stuff has ended over the last year which is not good because it doesn't give Disney (or whoever) the sense that there are other things to carry on besides Muppets, rather than just distributing and making a buck off the old shows.

As for Valentine, yeah i think he would definitely have diversified it more into a more established independant production house that didn't just focus on Muppets. As Chilly says, it doesn't make sense to just have them make any old sitcom or entertainment show but stuff that's loosely related to the Henson brand, effects driven shows, and other childrens shows would have built the company back up again. If he actually had the money to do what he wanted is another thing entirely but he had the managment people onboard who would have been good enough to do all this.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Especially if he hired me!!

 

[Aaron]

i just dont want the muppets to be retired

 

[MrsKalabash]

Here's more on Disney/Henson from Variety

The Muppets may end up back in Hollywood, safely lodged in the Mouse House.
That was the word last week out of Disney's shareholders meeting in Denver, where corporate chieftains confirmed the buzz.

The assets of the Jim Henson Co. were snapped up several years ago for upwards of $600 million by high-flying German kidvidder EM.TV. Idea was to supplement a heavily Teutonic cartoon catalog with internationally branded icons like Miss Piggy and Big Bird.

But like many of its German confreres, EM.TV got too big for its britches and subsequently crashed and burned on the Neuer Markt stock exchange.

A number of Hollywood players, including Sony, Haim Saban and, more recently, former UPN topper Dean Valentine, have sniffed around the property, but no deal has materialized.

EM.TV probably would prefer to offload the entire lot, as it has some stiff loans to repay in coming weeks. But Disney apparently wants only the Muppets and doesn't want to spend more than $70 million to lock them up.

Bets are the whole kit and kaboodle eventually will go for, at best, $120 million.

 

[frogboy4]

I don't think Disney will merely release old Muppet stuff. It's not their style. I'm just waiting for another Pooh movie to come oiut after this latest one. Owl hasn't had his big movie yet.

 

[radionate]

You can bet Eeyore will have his shot at a movie soon.