I’m labeling this “retro” even though this is one of the few times I won’t give you a long, drawn-out “when I watched this as a wee lass” sort of story to go along with an old show. Oh, sure—I grew up on Sesame Street and Superfriends and I’m only too happy to bore you with the tales of how important those shows were to me in my tender youth, but this time it’s different.

Because Fraggle Rock didn’t come out until I was already in junior high, see. So all I can tell you about it from my personal experience is that I babysat for some kids who loved it, and every time I let them watch it I found myself humming the theme song for days on end. I would be walking to the bus stop in the morning—”Down at Fraggle Rock!”—or working on a math problem—”Down at Fraggle Rock!”—or looking for a snack after school—”Down at Fraggle Rock!”—and often I wondered why I could only remember that single line. And then I would go listen to some Van Halen to try to get it out of my brain.

What? No, that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Just sharing my Fraggle Rock experience, is all.

Regardless of the earworm properties of their theme song, Fraggle Rock enjoyed a huge following and great success; so it should come as no surprise at all to learn that it’ll soon be coming to the big screen as a feature film:

Cory Edwards, who directed the animated “Hoodwinked!” for TWC, will helm the picture and write the screenplay. The Jim Henson Co. will produce and TWC will distribute.

Just like the series, the film will be populated by a mix of human characters and Fraggle Rock puppets. TWC co-chair Harvey Weinstein, who has been steering his company more aggressively into the family film arena, made the marriage with Lisa Henson, who runs JHC with her co-CEO brother, Brian Henson.

Ahmet Zappa will be exec producer with Brian Inerfeld.

It would be wrong for me to hope that they come up with a new theme song, right? Probably it is. But I can hope.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 6:28 am and is filed under Movies, Retro. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.