Twenty years ago, the creative worlds of Jim Henson got a historic shakeup when The Walt Disney Company purchased the Muppets and their back catalog. A lot has happened since the acquisition, some good, and some not-so-good. Itâs gotten us thinking: is Disney the best place for the Muppets? Our own Matthew Soberman and Jarrod Fairclough reflect on the last two decades.
JARROD FAIRCLOUGH: Twenty years of Disney Muppet-ship! Thatâs a whole two decades, if my math is correct. Math is different here in Australia, depending on the exchange rate.
MATTHEW SOBERMAN: I deal exclusively in Disney Dollars, so I think weâll be fine. Yeah, twenty years is wild. I was just re-reading the reaction Danny Horn wrote all the way back in 2004, and it boggles the mind that the Muppets have been with Disney for a longer stretch than the time between Jim Henson trying to sell the Muppets to Disney and the eventual acquisition.Â
JARROD: I hadnât even thought about that! I donât remember exactly when I heard that Disney had finally made the purchase, but I remember going to the official Muppets website and they had a countdown going with a photo of Kermit with Mickey ears, and it was up there for what seemed like a year, but was probably only a few months.
MATTHEW: I remember learning about it a little late, because I had gotten Disney stock as a Bar-Mitzvah present the year before, and when my 2004 Annual Report came to me, Kermit and Miss Piggy were hobnobbing with Pinocchio and Baloo.
JARROD: I wanna hobnob with Baloo! So, 20 years in, give me in 5 words or less your feelings about Disneyâs handling of The Muppets.
MATTHEW: Iâd go with: complicated, but skewing positive.
JARROD: Great one. Iâd go along the same lines with: Mixed, but ultimately good. If Iâm allowing myself an extra word, and itâs my game so you canât stop me, Iâd have to say: Mixed, but the right choice. Wait, no, thatâs still 5 words. I told you math was different here.
MATTHEW: See what happens when you use the metric system? But you (and, I guess by extension, I) are right. This hasnât been a perfect relationship, but ultimately, I do believe that Disney and its clout in the media landscape have given the best chance for the Muppets to survive as a viable franchise.
JARROD: I very much agree. Itâs been a damn roller coaster, and god knows the lows have been low (cough Muppet Wizard of Oz cough) but when I look at a lot of the highs, I donât think any other studio or company would have been able to achieve those things. Iâm often hearing things when Disney makes a weird choice (like canceling Muppets Mayhem) that âThe Henson Company should buy the characters backâ, but letâs be honest – would we get anywhere near the same stuff weâve had with Disney if Henson had stayed in charge? I donât think so.
MATTHEW: It breaks my heart to say so, but in my gut, I think Henson re-buying the Muppets would be a feel-good story, but it wouldnât do much beyond that. The two biggest (and best) projects theyâve made since selling the Muppets are The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, both of which required the participation of major distributors to make happen to the level of quality we associate with Henson. With Disney, theyâve got the big studio already. All they have to do is get it approved.
JARROD: Right, logistically the current situation makes a lot more sense and provides the oppurtunity for a lot more content, at a much easier level. I think the quality has been there in recent years, and Iâd argue there havenât been a lot of missteps in the past decade, perhaps Muppets Now aside. If you look at everything from, say, Muppets Most Wanted onwards, there have been almost only decent quality productions, even if the masses didn’t always love what The Muppets were laying down.
MATTHEW: I think youâre coming close to something thatâs a big reason as to why I still think Disney and the Muppets work together: Disney keeps giving the Muppets opportunities. If they wanted to bury the property, they could BURY it. (The Tomorrowland movie sends its regards.) But even when Muppets Most Wanted didnât do as well at the box office, we got the 2015 series. And when that got canceled, we got Muppets Now. And when Muppets Now failed, Muppets Haunted Mansion wasnât far off. In the current media landscape, it means a lot when a studio still has confidence in you to keep taking chances.
JARROD: Also, this is a company who invested quite a lot of money in two massive live shows! Sure, the 2015 series tanked, but Disney still had the faith in the franchise to let them use The Hollywood Bowl, and later fly the entire team out to London, just to give a live show that wasnât even made for Disney+ content, it was purely just for the fans. I think where theyâve shined though is when theyâve leaned in to that fandom side of things. Weâre a vocal bunch, but weâre also only a small bunch, so we can have a relationship to this thing that, say, Star Wars fans just canât.
MATTHEW: Youâre absolutely right. I think perhaps because weâre a very tight-knit fandom that we think weâre larger than we truly are. I mean, for peteâs sake, the Muppet performers know about ToughPigs! Thereâs a good chance some executive for The Muppets Studio could be reading this right now! But for whatever reason, I think the public at large likes the idea of Muppets, but they donât have an overwhelming desire to see new stuff with them. I donât understand it, but Disney has done its best to try and keep the Muppets relevant to the modern audience, but still keep the hardcore fans like us happy.
JARROD: Right, and theyâve done a decent job, again by giving us new content, but maybe they need to almost ONLY appeal to us. Which is a terrible business decision, sure, but thatâs where theyâve really made the most impact. When it comes to modern audiences, itâs all the fault of the early-to-mid 90âs. People donât want to see a new story of Kermit and the gang putting on a show. People wanna see âlol Kermit is playing Harry Potter and we can only keep one humanâ, all because of two out of eight theatrical films. And I respect Disney for not falling into that trap.
MATTHEW: I give Disney massive amounts of respect for not giving into public demands just for the sake of being popular. They get people who care about the Muppets to create stuff for them, and that thoughtfulness has kept my interest alive. But I do want to suspend the Disney love-fest for a moment, because we both said itâs been complicated and mixed. Mixlicated, if you will. Where do you think Disney still has room to improve? I can tell you where I think the biggest gap is, but I want to hear what you have to say.
JARROD: Firstly, a Mixlicated is my favorite cocktail. Secondly, where Disney has failed with The Muppets is the total lack of consistency. We get one Muppet thing, and then we donât get much else for a while. And I know for a fact this is something the new Muppets Studio management is actively trying to fix, but for a long time it didnât feel like there was much of a plan. Sure, they might go âLetâs make a TV specialâ, but there werenât any talks about what comes AFTER that TV special. And so fans would get all excited, especially if the production was good, and then that momentum wouldnât last. Which is why I think itâs been so hard for Disney to keep that mass appeal. Say what you will about the quality of some of the Marvel or Star Wars stuff, but there are ALWAYS productions on the go.
MATTHEW: Having a Muppet equivalent of Kevin Feige or Dave Filoni or Pete Docter would go a long way to keeping the brand vibrant.
JARROD: Oh, for sure, and Iâll gladly accept that job. But I believe thatâs also what current Muppets Studio VP Leigh Slaughter is attempting. And I have full faith in her, and only half because sheâs a fellow Aussie.Â
MATTHEW: Hereâs hoping she can succeed at that! Meanwhile, my biggest complaint has not to do with the Muppetsâ future, but rather with their past. Mind you, this is a bigger issue with Disney on the whole, but when they purchased the Muppets, they also bought a massive back catalog of material. I think I, as a lot of folks did at the time, thought Disney+ was going to be the way to get classic Muppet material in front of fans. But streaming is streaming, and it became painfully evident that Disney wouldnât shell out for the massive amount of licensing that would need to be done to get those specials and series back in front of eyeballs. And showing just how much is out there is a big part of convincing people that the Muppets are still worth watching. The Muppet Show on Disney+ is a major coup, but thereâs still so much left to see. Maybe I just want to watch A Muppet Family Christmas as intact a form as can be, without having to navigate dozens of recordings on YouTube, but Iâm a simple fan.
JARROD: Ah, yes, that fun licensing discussion. I donât remember who told me this, but a large reason the original Muppet Babies stuff can never be released is because most of the deals Henson with companies did for the live action clips were all handshake agreements. I believe they found one to use a Spider-Man clip in a filing cabinet written on a napkin. So when it comes to stuff like A Muppet Family Christmas, I can kind of get it. That said, it doesnât explain why we canât get The Muppets At Walt Disney World or The Muppets Go To The Movies streaming. Hopefully someone who can get it done is reading this right now, and theyâre going to pause after this sentence and call the legal department to sort out what needs to be done. Then we can take all the credit!
MATTHEW: We did it, Jarrod! We saved âLove in a Laundromat!â Anyway, to Disneyâs credit, while they havenât licensed a lot of this stuff for official release, they also havenât taken it down from the places where it can be found. Like I said, they could bury this stuff in the Disney Vault whenever they want, but itâs nice that they understand thereâs a demand for it.Â
JARROD: Yeah, I think secretly a lot of the people in charge like those bootlegs being out there, because they know their hands are tied when it comes to releasing it, but they still want it to be seen. Itâs if they start removing stuff from Disney+ that Iâll kick off.
MATTHEW: It seems more possible than ever. Luckily, what has been purged hasnât really been connected to any of their more popular properties, so hopefully theyâre safe for now. To wildly change things, I think itâs worth noting that The Muppets Studio is in a unique place within Disneyâs corporate infrastructure, as they fall under the domain of Walt Disney Imagineering, which are the folks who create all the Disney parks and resorts.. And especially in recent years, the parks folks have shown that they REALLY love the Muppets. How else would Sam the Eagle get a barbecue restaurant in EPCOT?
JARROD: I heard it was between Sam and Mr Curly Twirly, but I think they made the right call. Disney Imagineering is such a weird place for The Muppets to be, but it also kind of makes sense. Like, itâs the underdogs just trying to put on a show, and thatâs what Imagineering is – the people on the side, not those heroes in the main building, just doing their best to give everyone a good time. Thatâs why I think the parks folks love them so much, they seem to be the franchise theyâre allowed to play with the most. Because theyâre theirs. Theyâre part of the family.
MATTHEW: In a way, theyâre a huge part of the effort to keep them relevant. Sure, it may take a while for a new Muppet movie or series to be made, but suddenly youâre hungry at Disneyâs Hollywood Studios, and boom, Rizzoâs there for you. And given that, in the face of an ever-shifting media landscape, Disneyâs realized that the parks are the most fiscally dependable arm of the company. And if those Imagineers keep playing with the Muppets, who knows whatâll come next?
JARROD: Maybe weâll finally get that Muppet/Disneyland takeover they were discussing before Jim passed away! I canât wait to ride a green Matterhorn! Or Big Thunder Mountain but itâs now shaped like Gonzoâs nose! Or some third funny example I havenât thought of yet!
MATTHEW: Iâve got it⌠Disneyâs Animal Kingdom (But the Muppetsâ Animal, Not Just Animals in General).
JARROD: Thatâs not at Disneyland though, Matthew! Honestly, I thought better of you.
MATTHEW: Okay, Pi-Rats of the Caribbean?
JARROD: âŚYouâre a goddamn genius. You get a raise.
MATTHEW: Can I get that in Disney Dollars? They may not be used anymore, but theyâll make a mint on the collectible market!
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