Since 2005 we’ve been hearing rumours about a possible Fraggle Rock feature film from The Jim Henson Company, and although it has always seemed a bit hard to imagine, now that a new Muppets movie is about to hit theatres somehow it doesn’t seem quite so crazy anymore. A few years ago, The Weinstein Company came on board as a distributor and hired director Cory Edwards (Hoodwinked!) to helm it. However, they have since let the rights lapse and now the project has changed hands. According to Deadline, New Regency have now acquired the rights to the Fraggle Rock movie — yes, the same folks behind the wildly successful Alvin & The Chipmunks movies. But what does this mean for Cory Edwards and his vision of the film? At this point, even he doesn’t know.

Edwards had been struggling to get the project made for years but was met with much resistance from The Weinsteins. A couple of years ago, there were reports that the studio wanted the movie to be more “edgy”… whatever that means. Then just this past summer, they were able to convince The Scissor Sisters to write music for the film and it seemed like things were moving forward again. Alas, it may all have been for naught. Edwards recently put up an interesting post on his blog about the status of the project and his own frustration with getting it made:

“For the past year, Weinstein Company sat on the rights to Fraggle Rock until they expired, then quietly let the project die — without telling me, of course. I’ve found that, in this business, no one ever actually FIRES you. You just stop getting information. Projects don’t ever get killed, they just slowly evaporate (like Yoda dissolving away as his little robe just sinks to the floor) — peacefully, calling no attention to their demise. Well, I noticed its demise, believe me. For any Fraggle fans out there, please know that I was pushing and pushing and doing everything I could to get that studio to see the value of the movie and the value of my vision for it. I cut storyboard sequences together, I had a lead actor secured, I had a top music artist ready to produce the soundtrack, and from what I was told, I had a script that everyone liked. But as the studio experienced a regime change, new execs had other plans for Fraggle Rock. If you read my blog, you know that the number one request was to make the Fraggles “edgy.” Yaaaaay. The funniest part of that era was that once “The Smurfs” came out, I saw that they pretty much did everything to that movie that I was being pressured to do with the Fraggles. There was even a Guitar Hero scene. I kid you not.”

As far as the New Regency version goes, they are essentially starting over again from scratch, although Edwards would still like to be involved. But at this point, it’s not even clear whether they will use puppets or a live-action/CG hybrid. I think we can all agree that fans would much prefer the puppets, and if Jason Segel’s The Muppets is successful, there’s no reason they shouldn’t go that route. What do you think, can a Fraggle Rock movie still work and is it something that anyone would actually want to see?