Richard Hunt and Muppet Christmas Carol

[Muppet Master]

This might be the Mandela effect, but I could have sworn I read somewhere that Richard Hunt wanted to perform his characters (Scooter, Statler, Janice, and Beaker) for the Muppets Christmas Carol but that he couldn't due to being severely ill. Does anyone know if this is true?

Was Hunt aware that the film was being made or that his characters were being taken over by other performers? I'm not sure when exactly production on Muppet Christmas Carol started, but I'm sure it had to have started sometime before Hunt's passing in Jan 1992.

 

[Uncledeadly12]

According to @MuppetSpot, there were some loose talks of Richard being a part of the project, but his health and tragic death prevented that. Scooter was also supposed to play one of the ghosts, I believe it was either the Ghost of Christmas Past or Ghost of Christmas Present?

 

[Muppet Master]

According to @MuppetSpot, there were some loose talks of Richard being a part of the project, but his health and tragic death prevented that. Scooter was also supposed to play one of the ghosts, I believe it was either the Ghost of Christmas Past or Ghost of Christmas Present?

That's interesting to hear. Do you know when they filmed it? I'd guess production began sometime in mid-1991.

 

[Uncledeadly12]

That's interesting to hear. Do you know when they filmed it? I'd guess production began sometime in mid-1991.

If I were to guess, filming might've began sometime after Richard Hunt's death?

 

[Muppet Master]

Since we're on the subject of Hunt, I noticed that his voice got a lot deeper in the mid '80s. Especially in the Muppets Take Manhattan, Scooter and Janice have significantly deeper voices than they did just 3 years ago in Muppet Caper. I wonder why that was.

 

[80sMuppetFan]

I'm guessing the filming of the Muppet Christmas carol coincided with the death of Richard. Had he passed just a little later, or had the filming started just a little earlier, we might have heard his characters one last time, even if he pre recorded the dialogue for them while someone else did the puppetry.