Minor Unfinished Projects

The Jim Henson Company and Disney's Muppets Studio have developed, purchased scripts and announced serveral Muppet films and specials over the years. Many have been announced, but only a select few have made it to fruition or even went beyond the early development stages.

The Adventures of Rowlf in Outer Space
The Adventures of Rowlf in Outer Space is the title of a script conceived of during the rise in popularity of Rowlf the Dog as seen on The Jimmy Dean Show. It was possibly meant to be a sketch on that show.

The plot for this space adventure involved Rowlf travelling to planets and solar systems far outside of our own. On one such planet, everything is on wheels -- people, animals, trees, shopping centers, etc. Inhabitants of the planet have to roll on by from east to west because the nights are so cold, so they keep moving to stay in the sun. Rowlf gets tired of walking, especially when he has to push his rocket ship in a wheel barrow. Sometimes he gets tired and sits to watch the world go by -- at which time a song cue would be called for.

Throughout his journeys, Rowlf encounters many trials and tribulations and in one case, manages to save an entire civilization of Fneebs from the Horrendous Fneeb-Eating Ka-Zunch.

A script outline is held in the files of the Jim Henson Company Archives.

Johnny Carson and the Muppet Machine
Johnny Carson and the Muppet Machine was a television special conceived of by Jerry Juhl and Jim Henson in 1969. Details, proposal sketches and the rough layout of the story were published in the book Jim Henson's Designs and Doodles.

The Musical Monsters of Turkey Hollow
The Musical Monsters of Turkey Hollow' was a proposed Thanksgiving television special with music intended to be written by Raymond Scott. No date exists in the Henson Archives for this special, but Mr. Scott's involvement implies that it may have been developed sometime between 1965 and 1969.

The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made
In a 1998 interview, Jerry Juhl described a film idea that he and Henson had planned:

"There was a project for a Muppet movie that we kept returning to. Jim and I worked on it and just loved it. It grew out of the fact that Jim was talking about finances and if we did another Muppet movie at the time, it would need to be done inexpensively, since we were using bigger and bigger budgets for all our other projects.

This would have been from the time of Fraggle Rock on, the mid 80s. So we conceived of a movie slated as The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made. That was the original working title and that later became the subtitle with the title along the lines of, Into the Teeth of the Demons of Death.

The idea being that this was a film that Gonzo directed. Kermit was too busy so when Gonzo asked, Kermit said, "Sure, go ahead. I can't take on the responsibilities behind the scenes at this time, but I'll perform in it." So Gonzo wrote this cheesy, terrible plot that made absolutely no sense whatsoever about something being stolen that led to a chase around the world. Unfortunately, Gonzo blows half the movie's budget on the opening titles! So as the film progresses, it gets cheaper and cheaper where they're using a shot of the same street corner for every city in the world! We were still talking about this project in the last meeting I ended up having with Jim.

Every now and then, we still bring up the movie. Six months ago, Frank had said to me, "You know, there's still something in that movie, it would be a lot of fun to do." One thing that kept it from happening though was that for The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made, it still turned out to be expensive to shoot. Things like a tranquil island blowing up with a volcano and such."

Picture-book specials
Following the 1986 airings of The Tale of the Bunny Picnic on ABC and The Christmas Toy on HBO, the cable channel considered producing more in the series of "picture-book specials". A 1988 article in Channels, a magazine for the television industry, revealed that "Henson has ten specials in development that he would like to place, including a Valentine's Day program called Puppet Love starring Muppet dogs, and a special called The Lizards for the summer. These will eventually be turned into a series of videocassettes distributed by HA. And the books, published by Henson's publishing division with Scholastic, will further the publishing aspirations of the company."

Muppet Voyager
The 1988 article in Channels also mentioned an international Muppet project: "There are children in the world who have never heard of the Muppets, in China, Africa, India and the Soviet Union, and Henson is excited about reaching audiences in those countries. One project in development, Muppet Voyager, could serve as a vehicle for reaching some of them. It would shoot in a different country every week."

Miss Piggy mystery books
A July, 1990 article in Publisher's Weekly described a merger between Muppet Press with Disney Press in "the impending acquisition of Henson Associates". The article mentioned that "plans are in the works for a line of Muppet Babies toddler books, a Miss Piggy mystery series and a biography of Henson by Louise Gikow."

Untitled Halloween project
A year after Jim Henson's death, a short piece in TV Guide talked about plans for the Muppets' return to television:

"The classic Muppet characters -- including Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Kermit and Gonzo -- will be slowly making their way back onto television, beginning with a Muppet special tentatively planned for Halloween. That's the word from Jim Henson Productions president Brian Henson, who says the company is "coordinating an overall strategy" to get his late father's priceless puppets "back on the air and to do more with them. We'll start in a small way, primarily with holiday specials.""

The early treatments of the Halloween special included scenes where the Muppet characters turned into classic Hollywood monsters (i.e., Kermit/Frankenstein, Piggy/Bride of Frankenstein, Fozzie/Wolfman to name a few).

The same idea was later explored in a Henson video game, Muppet Monster Adventure. The idea for a haunted Muppet production would be re-explored with The Muppets' Haunted House (see below).

Screaming Edith
A 1993 Wall Street Journal article mentioned plans for a new Muppet project:

{{quote|[Brian] Henson's record label will soon introduce "Screaming Edith", a new Muppets hard-rock band whose videos Henson wants shown on MTV.

Muppets in Camelot
Muppets in Camelot had been mentioned by the Jim Henson Company many times in the late 1990s, and was "kicked around" for several years for a potential feature film. A script outline was produced, but the film didn't move forward into production.

The Muppets Leave Hollywood
The Muppets Leave Hollywood was an outside script bought by the Henson Company in February 1998. In the script, the Muppets (playing themselves) are living the high life in Hollywood until Kermit decides they've lost their purpose in this greedy world and takes them all back to the swamp.

Muppets in Space


Muppets in Space was an early concept for a Muppet movie with a science fiction theme. In 1996, Jerry Juhl and Kirk Thatcher separately begun to develop movie ideas for the Muppet characters' next feature film. Thatcher's movie concept was about the Muppets as space travelers in a sort of wacky, Muppetized Star Wars universe. Juhl's script (originally titled "Star Gonzo") was about Gonzo and UFOs, which would later become the 1999 film Muppets From Space.

In a 1998 installment of Ask Henson.com, it was announced that Henson's next Muppet movie would be Muppets in Space! The original description for the film was that Kermit would be mistaken for the long lost leader of an alien civilization, and the Muppet gang would set out across the universe to save him. However, after the initial announcement, the Jim Henson Company decided to pursue Juhl's UFO concept for their next project instead.

As for Thatcher's unused Muppet space traveling film, it has yet to see the light of day. However, Jerry Juhl remarked, "I hope someday Kirk's movie gets made, because it is really funny." Although this movie hasn't been made, Welchs released a set of Muppets In Space jelly jars.

The Next Muppet Movie
A script written by Brian Lynch was sold to Henson Company in 1999, called The Next Muppet Movie (originally titled When Muppets Attack!). The story involved an evil Hollywood producer named Mick, who lures the Muppets away from Kermit and the Muppet Theatre and into their own solo careers. Gonzo replaces Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, Animal tries his hand at rap music and Miss Piggy gets her own talk show.

The script called for celebrity cameos and plenty of spoofs, including one of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet film adaptation.

On March 10, 1999, The Hollywood Reporter featured an article on the sale of the script, citing that production would begin on the film after Muppets Haunted Hotel wrapped filming, which was to have started after the release of Muppets From Space.

The Muppets' Haunted House
The Muppets' Haunted House (also known as The Muppets' Haunted Hotel and Muppet Haunted Movie) had been mentioned in several press kits released by The Jim Henson Company during the 1990s, in 1998 a script was written by Dan Milano.

Some press reports cited the film was slated for a Fall 2000 release, but a 2001 press junket meant to highlight company projects, still mentioned the film to be in development as "Muppet Haunted Movie."

Pipe Dreams
Pipe Dreams is a lesser known Rodgers and Hammerstein muscial which ran for 246 performances on Broadway in 1955, based on the novel Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck. A film version of the musical was proposed starring the Muppets.

Superhero project
In the early 2000s, around the time when superhero movies were making a comeback, Craig Shemin proposed a film involving the Muppets getting superpowers.

Muppet Time Travel
Muppet Time Travel (also known as Muppet Time Machine) was first mentioned in a Jim Henson Company press release in 2001. A script was written by John Derevlany and involved Animal stumbling into one of Dr. Honeydew's time-traveling appliances, and going back to the Stone Age, where he inadvertently becomes evolution's missing link. Finding themselves living in a world of humans descended from Animal, including the wild Postman Joe, Kermit and friends must go back in time to fix things.

Kermit, Prince of Denmark
In 1999, Jeff Marx and Bobby Lopez wrote eight songs and a script treatment for a Muppet feature film called Kermit, Prince of Denmark. Like The Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island before it, this was a loose adaptation of an earlier work, this time William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. In the script, Kermit accidentally travels to Denmark, where he turns out to be the exact double of Prince Hamlet and is frequently mistaken for him. Gonzo and Fozzie were to take on the roles of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, while Miss Piggy would play both the "lovely Ophelia and the generous Gertrude". Jason Alexander is listed in the treatment as the evil King Claudius. The project was conceived as a musical, with Marx and Lopez writing songs for the project as part of their participation in the BMI Workshop, a training ground for many composers, lyricists, and book writers in the musical theater.

Marx and Lopez won the 2000 Kleban Award, a $150,000 endowment to encourage musical theater writers, for the lyrics (they tied with four other writing teams and received $37,500 of the total endowment). The project was sent to the Jim Henson Company, but according to Jeff Marx: "Brian Henson said he wasn't interested, and that was that."

Marx and Lopez would go on to write the acclaimed Broadway smash Avenue Q, which in part parodies characters from Sesame Street. Marx said that the experience of being rejected by Henson made them determined not to write for other people's characters again.

When Disney acquired the Muppets in 2004, Marx and Lopez were approached by Chris Curtin, then-head of the Muppets Holding Company, about turning Kermit, Prince of Denmark into a film. However, when Curtin left the company, nothing more was done with the project.

Songs
 * Off to Denver
 * There's More Than One Pig in the Sea
 * Something About Him
 * Claudius Rejoices (King For Awhile)
 * Without You
 * Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Doing The Mambo
 * Talk
 * In Unexpected Places

Kermit's Christmas Capers
Kermit's Christmas Capers was announced as a proposed television special for the 2005 holiday season however the project was cancelled before filming due to changes in management with the Muppets Holding Company.

Untitled Segel/Stoller project
In 2008 Disney has enlisted Jason Segel and Nick Stoller (of Forgetting Sarah Marshall fame) to create the next Muppet movie for the studio. Segel and Stoller will write the script and Stoller will direct.

Stoller commented on the film in a 2008 interview stating: "Basically, we're gonna do an old school Muppet movie, where the Muppets have to put on a show to save the studio. It's very simple. A big part of the movie is rounding up all the Muppets from around the world, because they've all been separated. So it's collecting them and bringing them together to put on this big show. It should hearken back to Great Muppet Caper and Muppets Take Manhattan and those kinds of Muppet movies. Jason and I are having a lot of fun writing it. We want to get as many cameos and guest stars as possible. Jason will play a human ventriloquist, and his puppet is alive and wants to be a Muppet."

The Muppets' Run for President
An election special, intended to coincide with the 2008 Presidental election was written by Andrew Samson, Scott Ganz, and Hugh Fink for The Muppets Studio. The special was first announced in August 2008, however it was not produced. The writing trio revealed the title and discussed the project, the inital pitch and its unfortunate fate in the 89th episode of The MuppetCast. . The special would follow Miss Piggy's run for the White House (previously the home of President Animal).