Possible future Lionsgate Henson DVD releases

[muppet boy]

With the recent releases of rare muppet specials from the Henson company, it leads me to wonder what the company will release next.
As of now, we have a halloween themed fraggle dvd coming in september. I was just wondering what other releases do you guys think are on the way. Myabe since henson, lionsgate, and disney seem to playing nicely at the moment, perhaps we will see new, unedited releases of The Christmas Toy and Emmet Otter. Maybe its a possiblity that the 30th anniversary specail or The muppets celebrate jim henson will come out as well. I would LOVE and unedited release of A Muppet Family Christmas, but I beleive that it is a Disney-owned property now.

So what do you guys think will or should be released from henson or disney onto dvd?

 

[antsamthompson9]

I'd love to see unedited versions of Emmet Otter and the Christmas Toy. I didn't buy the DVD's when I heard that they cut Kermit out.

 

[MuppetDanny]

check this out: http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?p=831743#post831743

 

[minor muppetz]

Maybe its a possiblity that the 30th anniversary specail or The muppets celebrate jim henson will come out as well. I would LOVE and unedited release of A Muppet Family Christmas, but I beleive that it is a Disney-owned property now.

I doubt Lionsgate will release the 30th anniversary special. I'm pretty sure that's owned by Disney. I figure it's 65 percent Muppets, 20 percent Sesame Street, 5-10 percent clips not owned by Henson, Disney, or Sesame Workshop, and the rest of the percent being characters and clips owned by Henson. Of course I don't know my percents well.

During the HIT days, HIT released a single-disc DVD compiling some of it's properties (though no Henson). And Lionsgate did include bonus episodes of Henson shows in it's Song of the Cloud Forrest DVD. Maybe Lionsgate could make some single-disc releases of multiple Henson shows. Maybe an episode or two of Fraggle Rock, an episode of Dog City or Secret Life of Toys, and perhaps an episode of something less likely to sell on it's own like an episode of The Ghost of Faffner Hall or even Lighthouse Island (maybe also include Time Piece or an episode of Mother Goose Stories).

I was thinking that they should only consider season sets of The Animal Show if they're sure they can release the Bald Eagle episode, and now I think they can... Bring out those complete season sets for Animal Show!

 

[Drtooth]

Exactly. Any special that Lionsgate will release has to be completely owned by Henson. That is the program itself, not the characters. For some ultra strange reason (being that it was the lead in show for the Jim Henson Hour, and technically an episode) Henson owned that particular Sesame special... but they have no ownership of any other. Those would have to be released by Sesame Workshop themselves, and they don't have a good track record with that.

MFC is, believe it or not, owned by Disney, and as far as I know, Disney could release it without the permission of Henson or SW. But that's not how to do business, and Disney bats zero at releasing old specials, especially Disney based ones, on DVD.

Lionsgate has been, so far, the liaison between all three companies, especially since they had a relationship distributing stuff owned by Disney that Disney wouldn't touch. So, I'm sure there would be a lot of co-operation between the two, and we just may see Henson programming that features Disney owned characters on DVD. As long as they have the masters that have everything in tact. Lionsgate has an unfortunate history of bad masters... syndicated cuts of ALF, poor VHS copies of TMNT...

 

[muppet boy]

Well, then we don't have a lot more specials with cross overs that henson could release do we.

The only thing then that I could think of them (henson) releasing, would be unedited versions of the chirstmas toy and emmett otter.

I guess i really shouldn't complain about a release of MFC either. I have a copy from when it when it was replayed in 88, although the tape is a little jumpy at times. You can also find it on youtube and unedited versions on ebay for a resonable price.

It really is a shame that henson couldn't keep some of the rights to specials that they produced in the past. Due to that, we may never see releases of such specials as MFC, 30th anniversary special, or The muppets celebrate Jim Henson. Thank goodness for youtube. I'm really glad that disney isn't horrible for taking down content that they own on it like other companies do.

 

[Drtooth]

Again, an edition of Emmit Otter with Kermit in it would HAVE to be in the master tape. If Henson expunged any and all traces of Kermit from any of the master tapes, we're going to be out of luck there. Which goes back to what I'm saying... Lionsgate only deals with one master copy of anything, and they have yet to track down better copies of certain shows. However, if Kermit is In tact on the masters, or they have a master that has Kermit on it, then I'm sure there's no problem.

We have to keep it open as a possibility that the problem isn't going to automatically be because Disney won't allow it.

 

[antsamthompson9]

Since I just saw a clip of Billy Bunny's Animal Songs on the Henson Company's YouTube channel, I'd love to see them release Billy Bunny's Animal Songs. It was one of my favorite videos as a kid.

 

[antsamthompson9]

check this out: http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?p=831743#post831743

Was the Lionsgate DVD exactly the same or was it unedited?

 

[animalrescuer]

As with everyone else, I would like a completely unedited version of Emmet Otter's Jug-band Christmas as well as Muppet Family Christmas. I wonder if the company will release The Tale of the Bunny Picnic because since Bean is part of the Muppet gang which is part of Disney, it would be nice if there was a DVD release of that with maybe some bonus material.