Brian Henson Teases Fraggle Rock and Dark Crystal

By Dave Gonzales on August 06, 2009

Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets left the reigns of his company in the hands of his kids, Lisa and Brian Henson. The Jim Henson Company has been teasing us with sparse details about a Fraggle Rock movie AND it's been over a year of talk surround a sequel to 1982's puppet fantasy flick The Dark Crystal. After months of circling these projects on the PR front, avoiding specific details about production, is Brian Henson ready to spill the beans on either of these Muppet movies? Sort of. "Fraggle Rock" is "still in very active development. Very active development. That has a very strong script," Henson told MTV, "It'll have a strong musical component...It'll be expanded to an older audience. 'Fraggle Rock' [the TV show] was presented... for a pretty exclusively children's audience. The feature film does expand it to be more accessible to a wider audience." Is this going to be indie bands writing songs for the Fraggles? Is there some serious premise the script contributes? Will we no longer save our worries for another day? As for Dark Crystal: "We have a 'Dark Crystal' sequel, called 'The Power of the Dark Crystal.' It has a very strong script." Ok, a title...I'm less enthusiastic about that. Even if the script is locked down at this point, the title just means we'll have to program another tag into our database, one that could easily be changed any time during production. Anything of more substance for us, Brian? "Both of those projects... are very close to going into pre-production. They're both really ready to go. [The studio is] just [in the process of] putting together the final finance pieces and the final distribution pieces." Very good. Really ready to go. I see the emphasis, I just want some real word! Is The Power of the Dark Crystal akin to Rise of the Skeksis? Are Gobo and Mokey coming to a theater near us or will there be new Fraggles to follow? What gives?