Brian Henson, son of legendary Muppet Master Jim Henson is not surprisingly creating a movie with puppets in it, but this one will be an adult graphic twist called Happytime Murders that features a world where puppets are not props, but living people and co-exist alongside humans.
The project is a comedy thriller written by Todd Berger and to be directed by Henson, with the help of Lionsgate. It’s a film that’s been brewing for a few years, since the Henson Co. picked up the spec script in 2008, and now the Hollywood studio is interested in helping to get it made.
The story doesn’t see a children’s show stealing the life juice from kids and turning crime-solving vampires into puppets. Rather, it focuses on a world where humans and puppets coexist, although the puppets are seen as second-class citizens. When “the puppet cast of an ’80s children’s TV show called ‘The Happytime Gang’ begins to get murdered one by one, a disgraced puppet LAPD detective turned private eye — with a drinking problem, no less — takes on the case [with his former human partner].”
This sounds an awful lot like Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Cool World, where the unreal co-exists with the real. And there seems to be its own mythos here as the cop’s partner is described as “formerly human” suggesting that there is something that turns people into muppets.
Those movies were a lot of fun and anything that can be described as “Avenue Q meets LA Confidential” would be awesome.
I look forward to seeing how this turns up.
