JHC a former shell of its former self now adays?

[dwayne1115]

a lot of times the Sesame and Muppet merchandise where the only thing keeping JHC alive. Sesame is really in a good place, the workshop can do as it sees fit with there Muppets, and they are protected from companies like Disney. The Disney owned Muppets are starting to get into a good place, and Disney is starting to use them wisely. Sadly however I think that the Fraggles and creature shop, are going to fall into little or no money situation. Maybe Disney could someday buy out the rest of JHC and be able to use all of there assets to it's fullest.

 

[Drtooth]

The problem, and I've said this so many times before that I'm actually tired of it...

Henson needs a business partner. Even back in Jim's day, they needed Lew Grande and eventually Columbia. And as I've said multiple times before, they've had absolutely crappy business partners. HiT clearly only wanted to work with Henson for a Fraggle Rock movie, and then dumped them when it was delayed. The Fatso Stupid Oscar Bait Weinstein company only cared about the cheap DTV Shrek Wannabe Unstable Fables set and delayed the crap out of the FR movie until they lost the license (their business practices are insane, let's leave it at that), Lionsgate just released a bunch of videos and wanted nothing else... and no one else wants to come in.

They can try to put something forth, but they need a strong business partner to distribute projects and get their feet in the door. No wonder why all they have is unrealized projects and some CGI kid's shows.

 

[D'Snowth]

Henson needs a business partner. Even back in Jim's day, they needed Lew Grande and eventually Columbia.

But they ended up owning all of the copyrights and trademark rights to titles that were produced under their partnership, not Jim. Caroll even said Jim jumped on buying back the rights to TMS, TMM, GMC, and what have you when Lord Grade went bankrupt.

Henson doesn't necessarily need a business partner (I see what you mean by it, but I digress), it all boils down to knowing how to conduct business.

That's why, commercially anyway, Sid & Marty Krofft were more successful and got more things done than Jim did in his day (and Lisa hated them for it), they had the best of both worlds: Sid was the one who came up with all the insane ideas and concepts for all these shows, and Marty was the one who had a mind for business, and managed to make all these ideas come to reality while keeping their company from going under due to their overwhemling financial woes... but then again, THAT was the downside to being independent, they were always under financed.

 

[Drtooth]

They need a business partner for money and distribution. And yes, that means the companies will always own the movies/TV shows made under them. That's not new.

Movies cost a crapload of money. Even so called "indie" films are distributed by the big companies with hip sounding branding that makes movie goers think these studios have some indie street cred. If Henson had the finances and power to make the Fraggle Movie instead of just sheer will, not only would they have done it by now, but they wouldn't have had to deal with the same company that settled hush money from the animators and writers behind "Escape From Earth" because screwing those animators/creators HARD would have looked bad when King's Speech was up for an Oscar.

As it stands, they've tried for at least 3 movies for almost 10 years now, and they haven't even got the small indie one in the preproduction stage. What does that tell you? TV shows are a little easier, but they still need to find some outsource animation studios and get someone to distribute those DVD's.

Puppet Up they can do all by themselves, though.

 

[MrBloogarFoobly]

I did know the classic Muppets are now created by PuppetHeap. For some reason, I thought Sesame Workshop makes its own Sesame Muppets now. My mistake.

I agree, Henson needs a stable business partner. I think it's more than three movies they've failed to get started: The Fraggle Rock Movie, Power of the Dark Crystal, the Who Framed Roger Rabbit style Puppet film, the Pinocchio thing. There might be more. Brian Henson has had his name attached to a few projects that never happened.

Hopefully, if this thing with Disney can be lined up, Henson will be set.

 

[D'Snowth]

In order for that to happen, Disney will need to get its act together: they've had the Muppets for almost a decade now, and have shelved countless projects, until finally, it took Jason Segel basically badgering them to do a new movie, and when they saw it turned out to be successful, now we're getting MMW.

 

[dwayne1115]

Well I did see that Disney and Henson are working on a non Muppet movie of which I can't recall the name.

 

[Drtooth]

In order for that to happen, Disney will need to get its act together: they've had the Muppets for almost a decade now, and have shelved countless projects, until finally, it took Jason Segel basically badgering them to do a new movie, and when they saw it turned out to be successful, now we're getting MMW.

Yes and no. It seems Disney would have made a Muppet movie eventually, but Segal's big name got it through. The mysterious announcement of "Muppets Cheapest Movie" somehow feels that it was their intention. Personally, we must blame everyone's favorite telefilm for launching the franchise on a sour note, leading the the management change for an apathetic hack who used to be the head of a certain Disney owned scam (cough Baby Einstine cough), leading to general apathy about the property.

But things are cool now. Disney's been doing alright with the Muppets. Had Henson still owned them, we'd be barely getting excited about another telefilm with G list celebrity cameos.

To say the least, Disney and SW beat Henson to the punch with viral videos. Something Jim would have seized the opportunity of of he were still around.

 

[dwayne1115]

Here is the Movie I was talking about, it dose not look like they will be using the Creature shop, and that Lisa Henson is just a producer but at least JHC and Disney are working together on something


http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwmov...-GOOD-VERY-BAD-DAY-Beings-Production-20130829

 

[minor muppetz]

With you being the resident SST expert, I'm surprised you're not aware of this, but yes, JHC (or, in this case, whatever the company was at any given time - Muppets Inc, Jim Henson Productions, et al.) did indeed own the SST Muppets. Remember, Jim was reluctant about merchandising them, because he was concerned CTW would receive all the proceeds and he wouldn't when they were his characters, though they assured him the proceeds would have been split 50/50 between him and CTW.

I thought he didn't want the Sesame Street Muppets merchandised at first because he felt it was innappropriate to profit from merchandise related to a non-commercial show. For awhile I wondered if he wanted ownership and a split of merchandise so that he could deny any Sesame Street product.

Though if he hadn't been talked out of allowing merchandise, I wonder if we still would have had all those Sesame Street albums. And I wonder if we would have had those Sesame Street Learning Kit books that came out (I read that those were in development before the show began... I have one and it doesn't even have a copyright notice for the Muppets).

JHC still owned the SST Muppets while the Classic Muppets bounded from Disney back to JHC to EM.TV, when that happened, the option was available for CTW/SW to buy the rights to the SST Muppets, which they did, and since then, they've owned the rights to them.

Really? I thought they just bought the characters when EM.TV was losing money. I didn't think Henson offered to sell them to Sesame Workshop before the financial problems.