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Jim Henson’s Four Broadway Projects that Never Happened

There are two things I love the most: the work of Jim Henson and Musical Theater.  One of Jim’s dreams was always to do something for the theater and he tried many times to make a project come to light.  Unfortunately as Jim’s career got bigger and bigger it became harder for Jim to devote time to everything he wanted which resulted in two of these projects never happening.  The other two will never been seen due to Jim’s untimely and sudden death in May of 1990.  But it’s still fun to look at what might have been.

There are four main instances where Jim Henson was either developing a Broadway show or developing a project with the top talents of Broadway.

Jim Henson worked on a Broadway variety show in 1972 with Larry Gelbart, who co-wrote the movie Tootsie and the musical A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum, that never came to light.  Bellow is some of Jim’s concept art for the show that never came to light.
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[More Info]

After that fell through, in 1979 Jim was working on a Broadway musical with Hugh Wheeler (who wrote the book to Sweeney Todd).  It was to be called “Bodo.”  The story was about “a humble but irrepressible 12th century goatherd [Bodo] who, to win the girl he loves, must triumph over a lecherous baron, a sanctimonious bishop, and other medieval evils.” Jim was recruited to build creatures for the show;  Goats (originally pigs but Hugh Wheeler did not want another pig to compete with Miss. Piggy), a werewolf, a leaper, and a variety of other things.  Jim commissioned Brian Froud to produce concept art but, sadly, the project melted into oblivion. 
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[More Info and More Concept Art] 

There are also two projects that Jim was working on that died with Jim’s untimely passing in 1990 and they involved Broadways two biggest living composers.

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Henson were working on a musical version of Noah’s Ark that was to either going to be a TV movie on Disney Channel or open at Walt Disney World’s MGM Studios theme park as a stage show.  Jim loved musical theater and The Phantom of the Opera was one of his favorite shows.  Apparently, both Jim and Andrew were both very excited about working with each other.  With Jim’s death, the project went through.  Webber supposedly resurrected the idea in the early 2000’s and contacted the Jim Henson Creature Shop to make the animals for it and work even started on them but, again but the project still never came to be.

My favorite project of the bunch that never happened is the Stephen Sondheim/Jim Henson collaboration.  Sondheim and Henson were collaborating on an Into the Woods movie according the Sondheim’s memoir.  According to Sondheim it was to star Jim Henson’s creations.  He implies that the film was the star the Muppet characters themselves but I have also heard that it was to star a whole new cast of puppet creatures made exclusively for the film (even though it’s fun to dream cast the Muppet characters in Into the Woods).  The project fell through when Jim Henson died and I will always lament that we will never get to see what these two extraordinary men could have produced together.

Unfortunately, these projects will never see the light of day.  But it’s fun to lament about what Jim Henson’s brilliant mind could have given the theater community.  

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tagged as: Jim HensonThe MuppetsMuppetMuppetsLarry GelbertHugh WheelerBrian FroudAndrew Lloyd WebberALWStephen Sondheimstephen sondheimSondheim

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    Hearing about all the projects Jim Henson had in the works makes me so unbelievably sad.
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