Jim Henson on the Big Screen
Empire Film Group, Inc. has planned a movie about the life from the Muppet creator Jim Henson. Production of the new movie might start late summer with a budget of $30 million.
“Jim Henson is one of the best known and most beloved entertainers of all time,” said Parkinson. “His story is inspiring, tragic, heartwarming and epic, and will make for an important and entertaining motion picture. This is the sort of movie that Empire will be pursuing as we build the company into a leading independent studio.” (ComingSoon.net)
Although a biographical movie about Jim Henson will be very interesting, as a Disney fan it will be interesting to see how much of the Henson/Disney deal we will get to see in the movie. In 1990 Jim Henson did talk to the Disney company about selling the rights but he died the week before the deal was going to be closed. The Henson family kept the rights in the family until 2000 when the children of Jim decided to sell the rights to a German company “EM.TV.”. After EM.TV.’s financial problems the rights where bought back by the Henson children in 2003, but only a year later they sold the rights of the Muppets (and Bear in the Big Blue House) characters to the Disney Company.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I’d find this interesting, I think. The Muppets were part of my life growing up, and although I have heard snippets of what Jim’s life was like behind the scenes, I’ve never heard the whole story. I’ll be looking for this.