Couldn't Kermit be the face of all of the Muppets ?

[Baby Gonzo]

I don't really agree .. i think it would be really confusing. I think the issue is more about Jim Henson (the person) still being seen to have a visible connection with the Muppets, rather than Henson (the company). Henson produce all kinds of stuff nowdays that Jim Henson has had nothing to do with at all.

I would have liked to see a deal where his signature remains on all the Muppet logos.

I agree. That would be confusing. And you're right, no matter what, they are Jim Henson's Muppets. I hope that never changes. I mean, I don't think it really could. Disney may have ownership of the Muppets, but they were Jim Henson's (the man) creation. Ownership is not the same as vision and soul. Though it has been nineteen years since his passing, Jim Henson is still at the heart of the Muppets. Unless something happens and the Muppets are erased from existance, I believe that will always hold true.

 

[Beauregard]

I'm trying to imagine a world where the Muppets were erased from existence...
It's not a pretty picture.

 

[Drtooth]

I don't really agree .. i think it would be really confusing. I think the issue is more about Jim Henson (the person) still being seen to have a visible connection with the Muppets, rather than Henson (the company). Henson produce all kinds of stuff nowdays that Jim Henson has had nothing to do with at all.

Hmmm... now I see what you mean with that... specifically, I think that a fair use Kermit should mean that the Henson company should be able to have the rights for non-Muppet Show appearances made prior to the sale, but that can be just as confusing as well.

 

[stephenjlizard]

You know what would be a great Henson call-out? To see the Country Trio pop up in the Muppet Show Comic Book. I know the four Muppet Show books have already been, for lack of a better word, carved in stone, but it would be great for Country Henson to show up in ANY of the coming Muppet comics.

 

[Luke]

Hmmm... now I see what you mean with that... specifically, I think that a fair use Kermit should mean that the Henson company should be able to have the rights for non-Muppet Show appearances made prior to the sale, but that can be just as confusing as well.

Actually i agree with that. A lot of the older stuff shouldn't be cut up and edited.

 

[minor muppetz]

Recently I have been wondering if Henson might have just been desperate to sell the Muppets in 2004. We didn't know that the company was in talks to sell to Disney until it happened, and I wonder if they might have just been in too much of a hurry to think about the productions it still owns featuring these characters. After all, when Disney bought the rights to Oswald, Universal apparantly made a deal to continue distributing the Oswald cartoons that Disney didn't get the rights to, and some were later released on DVD.

 

[minor muppetz]

You know what would be a great Henson call-out? To see the Country Trio pop up in the Muppet Show Comic Book. I know the four Muppet Show books have already been, for lack of a better word, carved in stone, but it would be great for Country Henson to show up in ANY of the coming Muppet comics.

Maybe there are already plans. I don't actually know, though. I have wondered if these characters would be off-limits due to being charicatures. Then again, charcters resembling Bert and Ernie show up on the cover of issue #4.

 

[frogboy4]

The Jim Henson puppet from the Muppet Show is owned by the Jim Henson Legacy. Disney does have the right to keep his appearances intact for the Muppet media, but cannot make new projects featuring the puppet. The Henson Company might share the rights with the Legacy, but I do know that any likeness of Jim has to go through approval from the Legacy. I would suppose the rest of the trio would go through one or both the Henson-owned companies so they could probably do it. Just my 2 cents. What used to be the Jim Henson Company is now split in 4: Jim Henson Company, Muppets Studio (Disney), Sesame Workshop, The Jim Henson Legacy.

 

[Luke]

Recently I have been wondering if Henson might have just been desperate to sell the Muppets in 2004.

I don't think they were desperate .. they got a great deal off EMTV, they got a great deal buying them back, and they got a great deal re-selling to Disney. If the Disney deal hadn't come along they were doing ok relaunching them during the nostalgia boom. Its amazing the amount of profit they made because of the whole EMTV thing.

 

[Drtooth]

Maybe there are already plans. I don't actually know, though. I have wondered if these characters would be off-limits due to being charicatures. Then again, charcters resembling Bert and Ernie show up on the cover of issue #4.

If you wanna get ultra-technical, you could just as easily draw Donkey Kong, Bullwinkle, or Doraemon on the cover, as long as it's obscured enough to look sort of like the character, but not totally like the characters. As long as it's a small background character that's small enough to just be recognized, but not exactly like it. I have a Mighty Mouse comic book somewhere that would show you what I mean, if I could dig it out and find a way to take a picture of it and post it. rest assured, it had a LOT of cartoon characters on it that weren't owned by the same people that owned Terrytoons cartoons at the time. They didn't look exactly like them, and they were small and obscured, but you could tell who was supposed to be who.

Actually i agree with that. A lot of the older stuff shouldn't be cut up and edited.

Easier negotiated, or something. Something to the tune of paying a small royalty as part of an agreement if money need be used, or a waver saying it's okay to keep the footage intact without payment as long as a disclaimer is somewhere in the project, either in the credits, or the cover of the DVD. Sesame Street uses the same disclaimer for Kermit, same as they used to have a disclaimer that said "Muppets (C) The Jim Henson Company" before they got the show specific characters back.

Though, I really think, if anything, Disney should have hammered out some sort of deal for the use of Kermit in future SS projects (again, disclaimer and reasonable, negotiable rates). You know, just for cameos and such.