Frank Oz Wants to Work on THE MUPPETS Again, but Disney Doesn't Want Him Back Because He "Won't Follow Orders"
Frank Oz hasn’t been involved with The Muppets for a long time. He worked side by side with Jim Henson in the creation of The Muppets and its characters, and while you’d think Disney would want to bring him back to work on future Muppet projects, that’s not the case at all.
Oz would actually love to work on The Muppets again, but during an interview with the Guardian, he shared:
“I’d love to do the Muppets again but Disney doesn’t want me, and Sesame Street hasn’t asked me for 10 years. They don’t want me because I won’t follow orders and I won’t do the kind of Muppets they believe in.”
The Muppets certainly have changed since Disney took over, and I personally don’t think the new projects that we’ve seen have the same spirit as the original. They aren’t the Muppets that I grew up with and enjoyed. These new Muppets are definitely for a new generation.
Oz goes on to say that he believes that the negotiations to sell the Muppets to Disney played a role in Jim Henson’s passing. He shares:
“The Disney deal is probably what killed Jim. It made him sick. [Then Disney CEO Michael] Eisner was trying to get Sesame Street, too, which Jim wouldn’t allow. But Jim was not a dealer, he was an artist, and it was destroying him, it really was.”
Damn. Oz went on to talk about the shift he saw with the Muppets when Disney did end up acquiring the property saying:
“[There was a] demarcation line between the Jim Henson Muppets and the Disney Muppets. There’s an inability for corporate America to understand the value of something they bought. They never understood, with us, it’s not just about the puppets, it’s about the performers who love each other and have worked together for many years.”
I can definitely understand what Oz is talking about. It’s sad, but what can ya do!? If you don’t like what they are doing, then don’t watch it. While Oz says he’d like to work with the Muppets again, it doesn’t sound like he’d want to do under Disney.