Jim Henson Cartoonist Reveals Why Classic ‘Muppet Babies’ Series Isn’t Available On Disney+
One of the most requested classic shows that people would like to see on Disney+ is the 1980s version of “The Muppet Babies”, which was a spin-off from “The Muppets Take Manhattan”, which featured a dream sequence of the Muppets as children, and it was a huge success. It ran for 107 episodes across eight seasons from September 15th 1984, to November 2nd, 1991, on the CBS channel in the United States.
The idea of presenting the Muppets as children appeared in a dream sequence in The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), released two months before Muppet Babies debuted.
While the show was very popular, and Disney has been trying to make as much Muppet content available as possible on its streaming service, the 1980s series isn’t currently available to stream on Disney+.
During a recent appearance at L.A. Comic Con, Jim Henson cartoonist Guy Gilchrist revealed during an interview with Dennis Does LA that the reason the show isn’t available on streaming platforms like Disney+ is due to difficulties with trademarks and copyrights.
“Besides using the stuff that was in the public domain, like the silent stuff that we used in the dream sequences… Remember, the editing on that was incredibly wonderful. We used a lot of film clips from a lot of different things, including Raiders [of the Lost Ark], Star Wars, and all of that.
Jim was very good with George Lucas. George came in and worked on Labyrinth with Jim and that was not their first collaboration. Their first collaboration was… they were across the street from each other. Jim was filming The Muppets and George was doing Star Wars across the street. Yoda didn’t work, so Jim, Frank and Kathy Mullen fixed Yoda. Then, Steven Spielberg was also a very dear friend of Jim’s, and Jim fixed E.T. because E.T. didn’t work.
Back in those days, everyone loved us. They loved Jim — would do anything for us. We didn’t fill out forms, requests, this or that. We basically did whatever we wanted to do with the blessing of all of the studios. These days, things are owned by Disney, Universal… and there’s not the camaraderie at the creative level that we had in the eighties.
That’s why, I’m sorry to say, you will not see the original Muppet Babies. And it’s the question I get asked the most. I had a lot to do with the Babies. I know how much you guys love the Babies and would love to have them back. But I don’t really know a way that that will ever happen. It’s copyrights and trademarks and that sort of thing, unfortunately.”
With the show featuring many scenes from many different films like Star Trek, Batman, Spider-Man, and Ninja Turtles, which different studios own, it would require Disney to spend money getting the rights to stream those clips.
Plus it would also need to restore the show in high definition, plus adding in international dubbing and subtitles, and sorting out music licenses, which would also increase the costs of making it available, though Disney has done this with other popular shows like “The Muppets Show”, “Moonlighting” or “LA Law”.
It’s certainly possible that this could be fixed in the future, or possibly some of the clips could be edited, but Disney will have to weigh out the benefits of if enough people would watch the classic 1980s series to make it worthwhile.
There is also a new animated reboot release in 2018, which has run for multiple seasons and is available to stream now on Disney+.
Would you like to see the original “Muppets Babies” on Disney+? Let us know on social media!
Source – Deadline
Roger Palmer
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