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In the 1990s, the Muppets began a trend that, sadly, was interrupted. In 1992, the troupe of puppets starred in "The Muppet Christmas Carol," which cast Muppet players as characters in Charles Dickens' immortal Christmas story. The Muppets followed that with the excellent "Muppet Treasure Island" in 1996, which took a similar tack; the Muppets were mere actors putting on their own modern production of a literary classic. This was a clever use of the Muppets, and there was every reason to believe they would continue with high-end literary adaptations.

Sadly, the trend ended in 1999 with the release of the lackluster "Muppets from Space," the troupe's last theatrical feature film for 12 years.

In the intervening span, though, there was one additional visit to the world of literature. In 2005, ABC aired the TV movie "The Muppets' Wizard of Oz," starring Ashanti as Dorothy Gale. Kermit the Frog played the Scarecrow, Gonzo played the Tin Woodman,...

When Jim Henson died in 1990, he had already negotiated a deal to sell his beloved Muppet characters to the Disney corporation, feeling that a big, brand-driven company could keep Muppet movies alive while he took a break to focus on more creative, strange, ambitious projects. Disney has since run hot and cold with the Muppets, making several notable hit films, but also multiple forgettable TV specials, and a few TV shows, two of which spectacularly bombed.

Making movies with the Muppets, Disney has learned, requires a gentle balance. Kermit the Frog is an innocent, honest character, devoid of cynicism, but the Muppets have always possessed an element of self-awareness. The original "The Muppet Show," after all, was half a variety program with singing/dancing Muppet performers, and half backstage drama with picky Muppet actors and overwhelmed Muppet stagehands. Most of the Muppet movies have addressed their status as a theater troupe,...

Quick Links The Muppets Bring Their Classic Silliness to Oz Debunking a Common Muppet Misconception Quentin Tarantino Makes an Unhinged Cameo

The Wizard of Oz has seen many iterations on the big screen, ranging from Oz the Great and Powerful to the recent movie musical Wicked. Each one has brought its own unique spin to the timeless story. One strange version was made by one of the biggest names in show business, the comedy puppet group known as The Muppets.

The Muppets' Wizard of Oz was the last of The Muppets' famous movie adaptations of classic novels. The film was made for TV and released on the ABC network in 2005. The Muppets' Wizard of Oz is filled with many wild changes to The Wizard of Oz story, some funny and some strange, such as the cameo from intense director Quentin Tarantino.

The Muppets Bring Their Classic Silliness to Oz

In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz,...

Rising star Rachel Zegler has her pick of work, from starring in Disney’s live action adaptation of “Snow White” to making her Broadway debut in “Romeo + Juliet,” but she’s ready to work with some non-human talent for a change. As part of Variety’s New York Issue, Zegler spoke with the publication about her career and the roles she hopes to take on, including being the main player in a Muppet movie.

“Michael Caine did it for ‘Christmas Carol,’” she said. “Tim Curry did it for ‘Muppet Treasure Island.’ I want to be the one!”

Other talent have taken up this mantle in recent history as well, with Ashanti playing Dorothy in 2005’s “The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz” and Jason Segel and Amy Adams starring in 2011’s “The Muppets.” Its most recent entry was a Halloween special in 2021 called “Muppets Haunted Mansion,” a tie-in with the famous Disney ride.

The Muppets have been churning out movies and TV shows for over 50 years. In fact, these puppets have done almost everything imaginable. They've taken on New York City, gone to space, and even had their own single-camera sitcom a la The Office. But a few Muppet projects stand out from the rest: their adaptations.

In the '90s and early 2000s, the Muppets adapted three classic pieces of literature. There was 1992's The Muppet Christmas Carol, 1996's Muppet Treasure Island, and 2005's The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. All of these adaptations were based on the original novels and Muppet-fied to be family-friendly adventures. So, what other classic books would make great Muppet movies?

Updated January 19, 2024 by Robert Vaux: The Muppets have no end of literary targets to take on, but they tend to do better with more serious works that they can properly parody. The article has been updated to correspond with current Cbr guidelines.

The best Haunted Mansion movie adaptation is an under-the-radar Disney+ special which received a fresh 73% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Unlike the previous adaptations, this version balances humor and heart, unlike the other feature-length movies that struggle with an inflated budget and fail to enrich the source material.

Perhaps surprisingly, Disney's best Haunted Mansion movie came out before 2023's $150 million box office disaster. The definitive adaptation of Disney's popular theme park attraction isn’t 2003’s horror-comedy The Haunted Mansion either. In fact, the best movie version of the much-loved property had a dead-silent, straight-to-streaming launch on Disney+ just two years ago. While the recent Haunted Mansion has a disappointing 38% aggregate critical score on Rotten Tomatoes, the Eddie Murphy-led The Haunted Mansion holds an even more upsetting rating: a dismal 13%. Ultimately, neither film elevates its source material, nor do their shoehorned narratives stand out on their own merits.

However, reviews aren...

The Muppets Mayhem has scored a Rotten Tomatoes rating higher than any Muppets project in nearly a decade. The streaming series, which launched on Disney+ on May 10, follows the adventures of the Muppet band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, whose lineup includes the beatific Dr. Teeth, the far-out hippie Janis, the Beatles-esque Floyd Pepper, the spacy Zoot, and the excitable Animal. The Muppets Mayhem is jam-packed with cameos from within and without the music world, including Kesha, Kevin Smith, Lil Nas X, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Morgan Freeman, and deadmau5.

Related: All 17 Musical Cameos In Disney's Muppets Mayhem Series

Rotten Tomatoes has revealed the show's score for The Muppets Mayhem is an officially Fresh 76%. While only one major Muppet project has ever received a Rotten score (2005's The Muppets' Wizard of Oz), this is the best score for the franchise in nearly a decade. The most recent Muppet outing that...

When Muppets creator Jim Henson died in 1990, the future of the Muppets franchise felt up in the air to its fans. At the time, Disney had already been in negotiations to purchase the Muppets, but Henson was on record with his refusal. Disney, still with a foot in the door, co-financed two Muppet feature films in the 1990s -- "The Muppet Christmas Carol" and "Muppet Treasure Island," both directed by Henson's son Brian -- which proved to audiences that the Muppets were capable of living on. Indeed, the two films provided a fascinating new premise for the Muppets: they would be stock players in adaptations of classic literature. Sadly, this tack did not play itself out, and after the not-very-good, straight-to-video "The Muppets' Wizard of Oz," that angle was abandoned. 

Come now, Disney, "Muppet Midsummer Night's Dream," "Muppet Dracula," and "Muppet Moby-Dick" await. 

"The Muppet Christmas Carol" (1992) is both one...

Exclusive: Singer and actress Ashanti is set to star in and produce rom-com The Plus One.

Ashanti will play Lizzie, whose only request of her “Male of Honor” Marshall is that he doesn’t bring his hated ex Marie to her destination wedding. But lovesick Marshall brings her as his plus one, and Marie does everything in her power to wreck Lizzie’s big day.

Filming is scheduled to start in December in Florida. Director and additional casting has yet to be revealed.

Producers are Danny Chan, Danny Roth, David Yates and Demetrius Spencer. Executive producers are Almost Never Films, Tina Douglas and Stephan Dweck. Writers are Austin H Garces and Brendan Bradley.

Ashanti most recently starred in the Sony Pictures Worldwide acquisition Honey Girls, which wrapped in March.

The singer, who has sold more than 27 million records worldwide, will be getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame...

The Muppets — specifically, the comedy-variety troupe featuring Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo the Great, et. al. — are in their sixth decade of existence, but they have never been more perfectly deployed than in their first project together, the Seventies syndicated hit The Muppet Show. A faux variety series, each episode was a mix of two kinds of segments. The first were vaudeville-style sketches from the show-within-a-show, where the Muppets sang, danced, told corny jokes, and appeared in shows-within-the-show-within-the-show like Pigs in Space and Veterinarian’s Hospital. The...

Professor Marvel’s crystal ball probably didn’t predict that the Avengers could go on to star in The Wizard of Oz, but a deepfake called The Avengers of Oz, posted back in March by NextFace, manages to get the job done.

The clip, which re-imagines the classic 1939 musical fantasy film using deepfake tech, casts Tom Holland as Dorothy, Robert Downey Jr as Scarecrow, Chris Pratt as Tin-Man and Chris Hemsworth as the Cowardly Lion, roles that were originally played by Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr respectively.

You can watch The Avengers of Oz below, but it cannot be unseen.

A deepfake earlier this year that imagined Holland and Downey Jr as Marty and Doc Brown in Back to the Future instead of Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd initially provoked a negative response from the young actor, though he later found the fun in it.

This sequel to the Jason Segel-starring The Muppets feels his absence in what is a hodgepodge of espionage and mistaken identity

• Will Muppets Most Wanted bring out the Animal in you?

• Muppets Most Wanted is released in the Us on 21 March and in the UK on 28 March

The last Muppet film, released in 2011, was really something special. Yes, it was funny and irreverent, but it also had tremendous heart. By painting Kermit and company as washed-up and out of favour – neatly referencing their succession of substandard vehicles in the 90s and noughties – and charting their subsequent triumphant comeback, it had an emotional sophistication that was entirely unprecedented. It was like watching a Capra film, albeit one that happened to gleefully reference the invention of the fart-shoe.

After watching Muppets Most Wanted, it's clear that this was all down to its writer and star. He's nowhere to be seen this time around and,...

Among its many pleasures, Muppets Most Wanted, the latest film starring Jim Henson's famous puppets, features several celebrity cameos. A smattering of half-amusing, half-random notables appear in the film, including Ray Liotta, Frank Langella, and Celine Dion. They are a reminder of earlier walk-on roles from the Henson and Oz era of Muppet movies — everyone from Bob Hope in The Muppet Movie to Kelly Osbourne in The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. In time for the new movie's release, Vulture presents 20 great Muppet movie cameos.Christoph Waltz as Himself, Muppets Most WantedWhile Waltz is great in most everything (okay, maybe not The Three Musketeers), his cameo in Muppets Most Wanted is especially funny since he revives one of the best Muppet Show sketches: "At the Dance!" In this segment, ballroom dancers waltz around, gossip, and make bad puns. But in this case, Waltz is so uncomfortable — his character is abruptly...

John Henson, the 48-year-old son of late Muppets genius Jim Henson, died of a "sudden massive heart attack" on Friday.

Henson's death was confirmed by The Jim Henson Company on Saturday, which posted the news of his passing to the company's official Facebook page.

Henson, like his father, Jim, and mother, Jane, was a puppeteer. His credits include work on "The Muppets' Wizard of Oz," "It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie," "Muppets From Space," and "Muppet Treasure Island." He was best known for being puppeteer behind the larger-than-life character "Sweetums."

Henson is survived by daughters Katrina and Sydney, and wife Gyongyi, as well as siblings Lisa, Cheryl, Brian, and Heather. A private service is currently being planned.

Last year’s The Muppets corrected a crime committed against an entire generation of kids: it redeemed Jim Henson’s legacy spoiled by shamefully bad Muppet films like Muppets in Space or The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. James Bobin directs a script written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller that draws heavily upon the classic vibe of the original series and classics like The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and The Muppet Movie. Even though the film features a prominent story with Segel and Amy Adams, it never dominates the film’s larger purpose of reintroducing Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, and the rest to modern audiences as they reunite to put on a big show. For longtime fans, The Muppets packs quite an emotional wallop and makes it clear that it’s once again time to put on makeup, light the lights, and get things started on The Muppet Show tonight.

[brightcove]1437787036001[/brightcove] When we sat down with the Muppets last week, we didn't just ask them awkward questions. We also took the opportunity to find out what Kermit really thinks of his The Muppets' Wizard Of Oz co-star, one of Total Film's favourite people, Quentin Tarantino. So, hit play on the video above to hear Kermit talk about the movies of Tarantino, and what he thinks of the man himself. What he says may surprise you... And if you in a Muppets mood, why not check out this brand-new clip from the movie, which is in...

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Anxiously awaiting the arrival of The Muppets movie? Why not join us as we take a look back at all the other films to feature Jim Henson’s characters…

If you’re as enthusiastic about seeing The Muppets as we are, you’ll almost certainly be excitedly waiting for its release in November. And if you’re a resident of the UK, you’ll have to wait until next February, which is a terrible injustice. You might have heard us moaning about this before.

To tide us over until then, we’ve provided a handy guide to the history of the Muppets’ big screen adventures, starting with their classic debut from 1979…

The Muppet Movie (1979)

The first cinematic outing for the Muppets is an excellent piece of work. The film follows Kermit as he travels to Hollywood to become rich and famous, meeting the rest of the Muppets along the way...

After making its debut in theatres this weekend attached to prints of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the first trailer for Disney's new Muppet movie has finally arrived online. Written by and starring Jason Segel, I've been looking forward to this for quite some time now, and really hoping that Segel can breathe new life into these classic Jim Henson creations. The thing is, for a movie that should be announcing the triumphant return of a beloved franchise, they've made a strange marketing decision that could result in this trailer being completely overlooked. You see, the whole thing is disguised as a trailer for a movie called Green with Envy, which appears to be a paint-by-numbers romantic comedy starring Segel and Amy Adams. Then suddenly, about halfway through the trailer, the Muppets characters are revealed. While it's a good idea in theory, I completely tuned out when I...

With the James Bond franchise halted (sad face), Sam Mendes has quickly found another project to latch onto, and boy does it sound Oz-some. According to a Production Weekly tweet, he's the front runner to direct Oz The Great and Powerful, based partly on the L. Frank Baum books that also gave us such films as The Wizard of Oz and Return to Oz. Like the latter (and to some extent The Muppets' Wizard of Oz), this film is set up at Disney. And here's the best part: Robert Downey Jr. is first choice to play the ol' Wizard. Because it had to be him or Johnny Depp, right?

24 Frames reported on this project a month ago when it was called "Brick." Scripted by Mitchell Kapner (The Whole Nine Yards), the plot concerns the back story of Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs (or O.Z. for short,...

Funnyman Jason Segel is writing a new film starring Jim Henson's muppets - four years after the characters were last seen in theatres.

The Forgetting Sarah Marshall star is a big fan of the bug-eyed puppets, and is convinced he can win over audiences after 2005 film The Muppets' Wizard of Oz flopped.

And he is hoping to revive the theatrical 1980s films starring Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear with a nostalgic movie tribute, after signing a deal with Disney.

Segel says, "I'm trying to bring back the muppets. I'm writing a new muppet movie so hopefully I can bring the muppets back to (be more) like (1984 film) Muppets Take Manhattan."

British-born screenwriter Nicholas Stoller is expected to direct.

Jeffrey Tambor and David Alan Grier have joined the cast of stars in ABC's original movie tentatively titled The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. Additionally, Grier has landed a role in Nora Ephron's feature adaptation of the TV series Bewitched. In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, a Muppet take on the classic L. Frank Baum novel, Tambor and Grier will co-star alongside Ashanti, Queen Latifah, Quentin Tarantino and the Muppet gang.