We're Getting A Muppet Halloween Special (At Last)

As we’ve mentioned before, Disney hasn’t been doing a great job with the Muppets lately; they abandoned the Muppet film franchise, torpedoed a new narrative TV series, and stuck the gang in a bunch of video conferencing commercials which, oddly enough, came out just before the pandemic hit -- thankfully this coincidence hasn’t spawned any “Dr. Bunsen Honeydew put microchips in the vaccine” theories … yet. Now, following the much-hyped release of The Muppet Show on Disney+, the streaming service has announced a new Halloween special — Muppets Haunted Mansion, because synergy.

Despite the fact that this is ultimately just a mega-corporation remaking a forgotten Eddie Murphy movie with beloved puppet characters in order to boost attendance at multiple theme parks, we can’t help but be excited about the premise of a new Muppet ghost story that in no way involves Christmas. And this isn’t totally out of nowhere; the idea of a Muppet Halloween special has been kicking around Hollywood for decades. Even in the early 1970s, Jim Henson pitched a “Muppet Halloween Show” before The Muppet Show was even a thing. Later, in 1991, we almost got a “Muppet Halloween Project” in which Kermit and friends become “classic Hollywood monsters” -- a wacky premise that eventually inspired a Playstation game.

And in the late ‘90s, around the time of the Disney sale, there was a project in development titled “The Muppets’ Haunted Hotel,” as was something called “Muppet Time Travel,” which we have to imagine was about the Swedish Chef killing baby Hitler. Of course, regardless of how spooky the new show is, surely it will pale in comparison to the previous horror benchmark set by the franchise: that Denny’s commercial where Kermit and Miss Piggy gleefully cannibalize her relatives. 

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Top Image: Disney