A Jim Henson Biopic Is in Development at Disney
A Jim Henson biopic is currently in the works at Disney and The Jim Henson Company. The upcoming project, titled Muppet Man, will be written by Michael Mitnick (The Giver, The Current War). Henson’s daughter, Lisa Henson, is on board to produce for The Jim Henson Company.
Muppet Man will chronicle the life and times of the famed puppeteer, with an emphasis on his work with The Muppets. According to Deadline, the film “will home in on Henson’s journey to convince broadcasters that The Muppets was a great idea and how he worked to get the characters on air where they became a comedy staple.”
Henson’s Muppet characters remain some of the most popular on television to this day. But he's also remembered for Fraggle Rock and quite a few of the Sesame Street characters, not to mention cult films including Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. Henson’s boundless creativity was cut all too short — he passed away from a rare form of pneumonia in May of 1990.
A biopic on Henson has been in talks for years, as the Jim Henson Company naturally owns the late entertainer’s life rights. Meanwhile, Disney has owned the rights to the Muppets characters since 2004. In 2009, The Jim Henson Company snagged Australian scribe Christopher Weekes’ Blacklist-topping script inspired by Henson’s life. Production was apparently discussed between Disney and The Jim Henson Company in 2010, but it never got off its feet. Now, we can finally expect a Jim Henson biopic to arrive in the next few years.
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