Something is brewing over at the Jim Henson company, and Norman Reedus is involved. The Walking Dead star has been hired by the company to make a new adventure series! This news comes to us from Variety.
This will be a different approach for Reedus. While the actor has a history of acting with, against, and fleeing from monsters, this time he’s teaming up to create them! Also in the creative seats, he’s teaming up with none other than Brian and Wendy Froud. The duo have history working with Henson Studios, going back as far as the 80s when they helped develop The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. They’ve since teamed up again to bring The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance to life. This new show, however, will take place in an entirely new world. Halle Stanford, president of TV at The Jim Henson Company, had this to say with Variety.
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It’s always a treat to see Henson bringing puppets back to television. The company, along with the Frouds, brought us back to Thra in 2019 with Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. The show earned high ratings from critics and fans alike, as well as snagging the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Program. Sadly, the series was canceled after only one season. Despite that, Henson is still keeping their hopes up for that franchise, as Stanford had this to say.
“We are nimble, we are resilient. We are ready to jump. The minute anyone would like to jump back into Thra [“The Dark Crystal” planet setting], it is a world that we will continue to build on and think about.”
In January of this year, Henson also premiered Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock on Apple TV+. The show served as a reboot of the original 80s fantasy musical series. The season currently holds a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and was praised by fans new and old.
The Norman Reedus, Jim Henson Company Team-Up Will Put the ‘Punk’ Back in ‘Hope Punk’
Dark Crystal Behind the Scenes courtesy of Gizmodo
Stanford went on to tell Variety that Henson is very excited to branch into more family-oriented primetime projects that dwell in the realms of fantasy and science fiction. Stanford describes the direction as “hope punk”, and uses it to describe the Reedus project.
It’s always wonderful to hear such eager and exciting words from a studio with such a legacy behind it. The words bring back thoughts of Henson himself and his desire to push the boundaries of both puppetry as an art form and television as a medium. Even though streaming has taken over the market for TV, there are still plenty of walls to knock down. It’s a delight to hear that the folks behind the company carry on the spirit of its founder. And it seems like Reedus feels that same energy, as he says to Variety about his new team-up with the Frouds.
