In collaboration with New Regency, The Henson Co. and Lisa Henson, daughter of Jane and Jim Henson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt will be bringing us a big screen adaptation of the 1983 television series about community interdependence and dancing your cares away.
Fraggle Rock was announced to be in development as a film in 2005, but after Henson Co. deals with The Weinstein Company expired, its continued existence was in some doubt, even after New Regency picked it up a few years later. This news is the first hint we've had in a while that a Fraggle Rock movie is still on the way to production. The involvement of a big name like Gordon-Levitt is also a good sign that it'll reach completion.
Filled with a cast of almost entirely puppet characters of a wide variety of scale — from the tiny Doozers to the immense Gorgs and, of course, Fraggles — the show was an honest attempt by Jim Henson to create a kids program that would help bring about world peace. Scenes involving its single major human character were cast and reshot individually for different international markets, so that kids around the world would feel like it might take place in their own backyard. It also had a theme song that is probably already stuck in your head.
Gordon-Levitt told Variety about his own love for the series and the various creations of Henson's studio:
The first screen personas I ever loved were Henson creations, first on ‘Sesame Street,' and then on ‘Fraggle Rock.' Jim Henson's characters make you laugh and sing, but they're also layered, surprising, and wise. From Oscar the Grouch, to Yoda, to the Fraggles. I've never stopped loving his work, even as a young frisky man, and on into adulthood. Collaborating with Lisa Henson makes me confident we can do something that Jim would have loved.
This isn't the only unexpected producing job Gordon-Levitt, who is known primarily for his acting career, has undertaken: He's also still attached in a producer role to Warner Bros.' film version of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series.