For years there’s been talk of making a movie out of Jim Henson’s popular 80s kid’s TV show Fraggle Rock, but for various reasons – some to do with financing but mainly arguments over the tone of the screenplay – it’s never moved past the planning stages. However now it looks like it’s finally going to go ahead at New Regency, as Deadline reports they’ve just snapped up the property rights to the franchise.
New Regency is the company behind Alvin & the Chipmunks, and it is unclear at this time if Fraggle Rock will follow those films’ lead turn Gobo, Wembley, Mokey, Boober and Red into CGI creations or they’ll remain the puppets they were in the TV show, which ran for five season from 1983.
According to the Jim Henson website, Fraggle Rock was ‘created as a way to show the world how to live in peace. Within the show are three different communities: the home of Doc, an inventor, and his dog, Sprocket; the world of the upbeat Fraggles, who share the caves of Fraggle Rock beneath Doc’s house with their small neighbors, the Doozers; and the Gorgs, gigantic creatures who inhabit Gorg’s Garden. Through these different communities, Fraggle Rock shows how we can all work together towards common goals’.
Hopefully this new deal means a Fraggle movie will finally get made, but there may well be plenty more arguments, as many of the problems the film has faced are between those who want to bring a slightly more modern sensibility to the franchise and those who see themselves as holders of Jim Henson’s legacy, who don’t want to alter anything. Maybe moving the film from The Weinstein Company to New Regency will sort that out.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
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