JimHensonCompany Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Either writer/director/producer/caterer Guillermo del Toro came across a gap in his schedule for the next five decades, he's allergic to rest, or he's afraid that Luc Besson might beat him to it, but the man has decide to act as executive producer on a stop-motion version of Pinocchio that he's developing with the Jim Henson Company.

Mind you, this is already in addition to his coming duties on The Hobbit, Frankenstein, Drood, next week's Rosenberg bar mitzvah over in Glendale, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and a couple of other projects as well (with any luck, a third Hellboy film is among them).

According to Variety, del Toro is currently working on the screenplay with Gris Grimly, whose strikingly illustrated children's books I've only very recently been introduced to, and Grimly will then co-direct with Adam Parrish King, he of much sound editing background (which really ought to be just as convincing as the animation, no?). Tentatively speaking, del Toro's Pinocchio will be out by 2011.

Muppet fever is in the air these days. Jason Segel got The Jim Henson Co. to help him whip up those awesome puppets for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. That led to the funny man getting the honor of making a new Muppet movie. And now we're getting more Hensonesque film awesomeness. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the company is going to the adult world of film noir.

Oh yes -- they've whipped up a murder mystery called The Happytime Murders (written by Todd Berger from a story created with Dee Austin Robertson), and Brian Henson will direct it. In this tale of adult puppet goodness, there's an alternate world where puppets and humans co-exist -- but not exactly peacefully -- the puppets are considered second-class citizens. The murder comes in when "the puppet cast of an '80s children's TV show called 'The Happytime Gang' begins to get murdered one by one, [and] a disgraced puppet LAPD detective turned private eye -- with a drinking problem, no less -- takes on the case."

Awesome. I can only hope there some Nick and Nora noir swank to this whole deal, but I do wonder: HOW adult will they get? The piece references Avenue Q, which is a big ol' raunch fest, but that might be too racy? However adult it gets, this sounds good. Do you agree?