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“I would love to remake the Muppets but Disney doesn’t want me,” Frank Oz told The Guardian in an interview released today. That’s right, the man who brought Cookie Monster, Grover, Fozzie Bear, Bert and Yoda to life says he’s not welcome in Disney’s Muppetverse.
What about that other beloved circus pole created by Jim Henson? “Sesame Street hasn’t asked me for 10 years,” Oz said.
“They don’t want me because I won’t follow orders and I won’t be the kind of Muppets they believe in,” he continued. How does Oz describe the new version of the Muppets?
“The soul is not there,” he said. The soul is what makes things grow and be funny.
After years of bickering, Disney purchased Henson’s beloved characters in 2004. Oz sees a “line between the Jim Henson Muppets and the Disney Muppets… There is an inability for US businesses to understand the value of something they bought. They never understood, with us it’s not just about the puppets, it’s about the performers who love each other and have worked together for many years.
The center of this universe, Henson, died in 1990 of strep toxic shock syndrome while negotiating a deal with Michael Eisner, then CEO of Disney. Oz sees a connection.
“The Disney deal is probably what killed Jim,” he told The Guardian. “It made him sick.”
“Eisner was also trying to get Sesame Street, which Jim didn’t want to allow. But Jim wasn’t a merchant, he was an artist, and it was destroying him, it really was, ”says Oz.
Disney never had the Sesame Street characters but, Oz laments, he’s not able to work with them either.
“I miss them and love them,” he said.
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