One of my earliest TV-related memories is being allowed to stay up a little bit past bedtime to watch the series premiere of Fraggle Rock on HBO. The hugeness of getting an extension on bedtime for the sake of a TV show is likely the reason why I can vividly remember sitting in front of the television to watch a new type of Muppet show make its U.S. debut. Since then, the words "dance your cares away" have always triggered the desire to do an enthusiastic double-clap. And it is for that reason, combined with how well The Muppets worked with its own comeback, that I'm interested to see how the musical rock-dwelling Fraggles do with a big-screen revival.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, a Fraggle Rock feature film has been in the works for a while now at various companies, with the property set up at New Regency in 2011. The Jim Henson Co. and Montecito Picture Co. are producing, and now it looks like there are two writers on board to pen the script. Rango co-writer Jim Byrkit has been tapped to write alongside Alex Manugian (who played a voice-role in the Gore Verbinski animated film.)
It should be interesting to see how the series is adapted to a film. Unlike The Muppet Show, which was a sort of variety show/sketch comedy series, Fraggle Rock played more like a scripted series, focusing on the adventures of special "species" of Muppet that lived in a cave-like structure where they laughed, danced, sang and ate radishes and whatever those constructions the hard-working Doozers were always building. Interactions with the outside world came in the form of Gobo's Uncle Traveling Matt, who was often writing to Gobo about the weird adventures he got up to with humans. Attempts to retrieve his mail had Gobo coming into contact with a human inventor and his muppet dog Sprocket. And then there was the family of giant Muppet-people called the Gorgs ("Look ma, I caught a Fraggle!") and the advice-giving Trash Heap.
Needless to say, the world was fairly well established in the series and could certainly work for a movie, especially if they can put together a catchy list of songs for the soundtrack.
