Both a Fraggle Rock film and a follow-up to Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal have been rumoured for a long time now, but nothing ever seems to come of them (in fact the Dark Crystal 2 has been talked about ever since the first one came out in 1982). Now Brian Henson (son of Jim) has been talking to MTV Movies Blog and gave an update on both of these projects.
Henson told them that Fraggle Rock is, “still in very active development. Very active development. That has a very strong script.” He also added that it’d have a strong musical component, and that they’re trying to expand things so that while the original TV series was made very much for young children, the movie will try to expand things for a wider audience.
On the Dark Crystal sequel he confirmed that it’ll be called Power Of The Dark Crystal, which Henson also says has a strong script. “Both of those projects… are very close to going into pre-production,” Henson said to MTV. “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.”
Let’s hope they really do go ahead, as it’d be great to return to both the world of Fraggle Rock and The Dark Crystal, although particularly with the latter, it’ll have to be a stand-alone tale, as I’m not sure how many kids nowadays know the original (and have been frigging terrified by it).
If you’re wondering why Henson didn’t talk about the rumoured Muppet movie that Jason Segal’s involved in, it’s because The Jim Henson Company no longer owns the Muppets. They were sold to Disney, and so now Brian and co. are working hard on bringing some of their other properties back to life.