Wocka Wocka

Why Doesn’t Disney+ Have More Muppet Stuff?

The curious case of Disney’s Muppet erasure, explained.

March 25, 2020

Why Doesnt Disney Have More Muppet Stuff — © Henson Associates/Everett Collection.

In these uncertain times, we are faced with a number of pressing questions: When will the quarantine end? Do I have enough toilet paper? And, of course, why isn’t The Muppet Show on Disney+?

That last question isn’t as easy to answer as you’d expect—but the reason can most easily be traced to outgoing Disney CEO Bob Iger.

Iger inherited the Muppets from his predecessor, the embattled Michael Eisner—who purchased the property in 2004, less than a year before he left the company. (Eisner had known Jim Henson since 1967 and had been trying to make the deal happen since 1989.) And though Iger’s tenure was defined by blockbuster deals of his own—the purchase of venerable institutions like Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox—Iger was less than enthusiastic about integrating the Muppets into Disney’s portfolio.

His ambivalence for Henson’s characters can be seen in the slipshod direction the property has taken since the Disney acquisition. Rather than releasing big-ticket Muppet projects, Iger initially relegated them to what was then Disney Interactive, a part of the company responsible for mobile games and corporate websites. He then oversaw a baffling series of creative decisions, from announcing (and then jettisoning) a Frank Oz–directed Muppets feature based on a project that Henson had worked on, to having the characters star in a weak, made-for-TV-movie version of The Wizard of Oz, to a controversial 2015 Muppets TV show that cribbed from The Office and failed to find an audience. (Yes, Iger’s Disney also released 2011’s The Muppets, a critical and commercial success that also won a best-original-song Oscar—but it was followed by a disappointing 2014 sequel that brought the franchise back to square one.)

If these attempts at revitalization seem half-hearted, that’s because they probably are. “I think you have to have a vested interest from the top,” Brian Jay Jones—author of the indispensable Jim Henson: A Biography—said of Iger and the Muppets. “He’s so interested in Marvel and Star Wars because these are the kids he brought to the table. The Muppets came in under somebody else’s watch.” (Bob Iger did not respond to a request for comment.)

Beyond their 2009 cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a viral music video hit that currently stands at 82 million YouTube views (it also won two Webby Awards), the Muppets have failed to find much purchase in the current pop-culture landscape. That’s especially baffling given the generational goodwill that persists towards its characters as well as Disney’s uncanny ability to reinvigorate old properties for modern audiences—but it’s probably why Disney+ doesn’t highlight the Muppets.

Though they’re a marquee brand, Henson’s creations aren’t even given their own dedicated button on the streaming service—unlike Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars. When you look for the Muppets, you’ll also find surprisingly little in the way of content. The service currently features the two original Muppet films (The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper), the two films Disney made before the company owned the rights to the characters (Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island), the two films made after Disney owned the rights (Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted), the new Muppet Babies TV series, and the 2015 Muppets mockumentary series, plus some short-form miscellanea like Muppet Moments. That’s it. (Disney+ did not respond to a request for comment.)

Meanwhile, dozens of hours of Muppet content are unavailable on Disney+, including but not limited to: the entire run of The Muppet Show and Muppet Babies (both of which ran for more than 100 episodes), plus the entirety of Muppets Tonight, and an untold number of specials and TV movies like The Muppets at Walt Disney World, Muppet Family Christmas, and Muppets Wizard of Oz.

There could be other, more complicated issues keeping the Muppets off the service as well. Several Muppet properties may be missing due to rights issues involving music clearances; the original Muppet Babies also features lots of footage from classic movies, which could make streaming rights a thorny legal issue. Then again: three whole seasons of The Muppet Show were already remastered and cleared for release on DVD in 2005, 2007, and 2008, with only minor alterations. And Disney now owns Lucasfilm and the 20th Century Fox library, which theoretically takes care of the Muppet Babies issue as well.

Jones, at least, thinks clearances can’t explain the missing shows: “I would think that the cost of clearing the music for The Muppet Show, at this point when you’re the Disney conglomerate, would be the equivalent of a rounding error,” he said. “I’m not sure what the real problem is. That seems like any easy crutch and that could have been true 15 years ago. I don’t know why clearing songs would be a problem.”

What makes this situation even stranger is that Disney+ could have been used as a way to both reintroduce the Muppet characters to a new generation of viewers, and continue their adventures for the generations already familiar with them. There is some evidence that Disney eventually intends to do just that: it has announced plans for a streaming show called Muppets Now, officially described as an “unscripted series featuring three different segments of a game show, a cooking show, and a talk show,” tentatively due to debut in summer 2020.

But Disney also said no to another Muppet streaming project, one that could have potentially jump-started the brand once more. Last fall, word leaked that Josh Gad and Once Upon a Time producers Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis were working on a new Muppet project for Disney+ that would feature songs from the Frozen husband/wife duo of Bobby and Kristen Lopez. Titled Muppets Live Another Day, it was set a year after the events of The Muppets Take Manhattan and was, according to Gad, “Muppets by way of Stranger Things.” This is mostly true. I was given a copy of the script for the project and can say that Muppets Live Another Day was a big, hearty, extremely funny musical mystery that sees the Muppets reunited after a shadowy figure starts kidnapping them (there are shades of Watchmen, another ’80s-set staple). It was a bold concept, rooted in Muppet classicism but willing to push the franchise in new directions. It also maintained the classic Muppet brand of irreverence, self-referentiality, let’s-put-on-a-show theatricality, and heart in a way that no recent Muppet project has.

Yet Disney wound up passing on the show, even though Muppets Live Another Day could have been a flagship series for Disney+—with the Muppets sending up the trappings of a streaming series in the same way the original Muppet Show played with the boundaries of the variety show format. Instead, as Fast Company noted when reporting about the project’s cancelation, “The checkered history of the Muppets under Disney’s ownership continues.”

With rights issues no longer much of a hindrance, and Iger stepping down as Disney’s CEO, there might be a new champion for the characters in the form of Bob Chapek, the company’s new CEO and chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products. Under Chapek’s watch, a number of new Muppet initiatives were enacted in Disney’s theme parks, including a recently opened Sam the Eagle–themed barbeque joint in EPCOT.

It’s unclear whether Chapek likes the Muppets more than Iger appeared to, but he at least seems to better understand their value—and he’s publicly stated how dedicated he is to exploiting Disney’s rich catalogue of intellectual property. (“I believe that every attraction should tell a story that resonates with guests of all ages, which is why we’re putting in more Disney, more Pixar, more Marvel, and more Star Wars into our parks,” he said at 2019’s D23 Expo.) If he does wind up being the Muppets’ savior, can he start by putting The Muppet Show on Disney+?

HWD Daily