Puppet domination continues as New Regency Productions has purchased the feature film rights to the TV series Fraggle Rock. Part of the Jim Henson “Muppet” brand, Fraggle Rock aired on HBO between 1983 and 1987. The show starred the Fraggles, a diminutive group of colorful humanoid fuzzballs that inhabit Fraggle Rock.
Turning Fraggle Rock into a movie has been tumultuous over the last decade, with plans for an adaptation first announced in 2005. By May of 2008, The Weinstein Company was brought onboard to produce the film, which was to be a musical penned and directed by comedian Cory Edwards. Those plans ultimately failed to deliver a movie and the Weinstein’s lost the film rights earlier this year, which New Regency, producers of Alvin and the Chipmunks, have just picked up.
Unlike the showbiz-centered Muppets, the Fraggles had an original mythology involving societal structure, dream-sharing and hints of time-space travel. Deadline says no word yet on whether the Fraggles will be puppet-based or CGI, but you can bet the success of next month’s The Muppets will be of interest to New Regency. Though the huge returns on Alvin and the Chimpmunks and CGI contemporary The Smurfs would make digital Fraggles seem likely, the reverence for Henson’s puppetry may convince the studio to keep true to the original series.