Many of you know that I’m on Twitter now. And if you’ve been following me @RealCoryEdwards you’ve already experienced the joy of reading my up-to-the-minute thoughts! But if you haven’t, you’ll want to join Twitter very soon and follow along. It’s quick and it’s free, and in the next few weeks I’ll be doing something on Twitter that no one’s ever done before. That’s right. A first. I’ve made a bold claim. More details to come, but keep your eyes peeled for the hashtag #cosmonkey. Viva new media!

One of the things I want to do more of here is promote creativity by others, wherever I see it. Adele Enersen is a writer in Finland who has invented some amazing scenes with her sleeping infant. She does this with only bedsheets and nearby items, and her little model sleeps through it all (And I just found out she’s a “Hoodwinked” fan, so I like her even more). These images have entertained so many that Adele is publishing a book of them, “When My Baby Dreams,” due in 2012 by Balzer + Bray.

This is a favorite. Guess why?

It goes to show that inspiration can take surprising forms, and create art in ways we never thought of before.

See more here at Mila’s Daydreams (Images used with permission).

** BEFORE YOU READ ANY FURTHER, PLEASE KNOW THAT THE FOLLOWING WAS AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE. SORRY FOR RAISING ANYONE’S HOPES! **

Well, since we’re not having much luck with the movie these days, I’m pleased to announce another venture that will bring the classic show to life. As of this week, I have been brought on as Chief Creative Consultant on “FRAGGLE ROCK: THE MUSICAL.”

This show will be a live Broadway-length, music-filled extravaganza, performed by people and giant puppet costumes, ala Julie Taymor’s “The Lion King.” We thought it would be important to keep the element of puppetry, while at the same time giving our human performers the chance to fully shine and express themselves.

The movie has had some major hurdles, but Fraggle Rock has always been ideal for Broadway. It’s very musical, it has a colorful, non-real tone that makes it easy to leap to the Broadway stage. The producers (who I am not at liberty to reveal right now) want to take the music of the series and really “upgrade it” for a modern audience. So there is talk of bringing in a major dance/hip-hop producer to bring an “urban sensibility” to the Fraggles. Names discussed have been Will.I.Am., Usher, Justin Timberlake and Dr. Dre.

While the plot is under wraps at the moment, I can tell you that the general premise is that Doc rents his old house to a rock band, and they set up in his old lab to start rehearsing. The Fraggles are drawn up through their Fraggle hole by the music, and end up joining the band on a bus tour across the United States. This allows the show to stage lots of musical numbers in many settings and genres. There’s also strong interest in adding a NEW FRAGGLE to the core cast. Right now we’re calling him “KATAPPY,” the son of Cantus the Minstrel from the series. Katappy loves dance and the producers want to base him on Savion Glover. The plan is to have Katappy Fraggle played by the winner of the next “So You Think You Can Dance.” There will be a huge tie-in with the show this year. If all goes well, GOBO FRAGGLE will appear as one of the judges (look out, Mia Michaels! Who’s gonna have the craziest ‘do?).

Yes, rest assured there will be an ALL-GORG dance number and that Sprocket and Doc will do their own pots-and-pans solo, right out of the hit show “Stomp.”

This is all in the very early planning stages, but I wanted to at least announce this new venture today. I’m excited to be a part of the Fraggle Rock universe, whatever form it may take.  And if there’s anything we’ve all learned from “Spider-Man: Turn On The Dark,” it’s not to put anyone in a flying harness.

UPDATE: 10:30 pm

Thanks for indulging my silly attempts at an April Fool’s joke.  I hope I got some of you. If you want to buy a “Katappy” T-Shirt, they are $65.00.

Many, many, many of you have repeatedly asked for some kind of update on the Fraggle Rock movie. The truth is, I got nothin’. There’s nothing to report except that The Weinstein Company has everything they need to move forward, and the ball is in their court. They’ve talked about getting a new writer, which I’m willing to do. They’ve talked about starting over from scratch, which I’m willing to do. But I have not heard a peep from their camp in almost a year. I completely sympathize with all of you that are waiting for a movie, but let’s all remember that the next best thing to making a Fraggle movie is avoiding making a BAD ONE. So at least we’re doing that.

Until something new happens to awaken the project from its deep coma, we can at least enjoy the untainted TV series on DVD and The Hub Network. As for me, I’m already working on new things. I hope you’ll stick around and check in here… I’ll be announcing my next project very, very soon.

Hey Fraggle Fans, I am auctioning off a cool item to help raise money for my son’s preschool. It’s the ENTIRE SERIES on DVD, signed by REAL FRAGGLES.

START BIDDING HERE.

This is a rare boxed set they do not make anymore. It has a sculpted logo on the box, a “map of the Fraggle universe” with original art from designer Michael Frith, and a special features disc. But what makes it a one-of-a-kind collectible is who I got to sign it.

This box has been autographed by THREE of the FIVE original Fraggle performers: Karen Prell, Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire. They even had their characters sign autographs too (The World’s Oldest Fraggle has some shakey handwriting, let me tell you).

Until the world has a Fraggle Movie (and that might be just before the next ice age), you can at least have a chance to own a major keepsake from the series. And if your bid wins, you’ll be helping a lot of kids build a new preschool — isn’t that something the Fraggles would want?

Mark Harris just wrote a chilling and fascinating article for GQ that you’re going to want to read if you love movies. Harris’ “State of the Union” lays studio movies out on the autopsy table. And it ain’t pretty. This article will help you understand what’s happened to movies, and why you may feel like you are no longer being told stories but being hit over the head with giant, loud, plastic PRODUCT.

It’s a very educational read — equal parts scathing, inspiring and deflating. Hopefully, it will make you want to rally behind making (and buying tickets to) something better. The article is so good that I want to whet your appetite with the opening paragraphs here. We need a revolution, and we need it badly.

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You want to understand how bad things are in Hollywood right now—how stifling and airless and cautious the atmosphere is, how little nourishment or encouragement a good new idea receives, and how devoid of ambition the horizon currently appears—it helps to start with a success story.

Consider: Years ago, an ace filmmaker, the man who happened to direct the third-highest-grossing movie in U.S. history, The Dark Knight, came up with an idea for a big summer movie. It’s a story he loved—in fact, he wrote it himself—and it belonged to a genre, the sci-fi action thriller, that zipped right down the center lane of American popular taste. He cast as his leading man a handsome actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, who happened to star in thesecond-highest-grossing movie in history. Finally, to cover his bet even more, he hired half a dozen Oscar nominees and winners for supporting roles.

Sounds like a sure thing, right? Exactly the kind of movie that a studio would die to have and an audience would kill to see? Well, it was. That film, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, received admiring reviews, became last summer’s most discussed movie, and has grossed, as of this writing, more than three-quarters of a billion dollars worldwide.

And now the twist: The studios are trying very hard not to notice its success, or to care. Before anybody saw the movie, the buzz within the industry was: It’s just a favor Warner Bros. is doing for Nolan because the studio needs him to make Batman 3. After it started to screen, the party line changed: It’s too smart for the room, too smart for the summer, too smart for the audience. Just before it opened, it shifted again: Nolan is only a brand-name director to Web geeks, and his drawing power is being wildly overestimated. After it grossed $62 million on its first weekend, the word was: Yeah, that’s pretty good, but it just means all the Nolan groupies came out early—now watch it drop like a stone.

And here was the buzz three months later, after Inception became the only release of 2010 to log eleven consecutive weeks in the top ten: Huh. Well, you never know.

“Huh. Well, you never know” is an admission that, put simply, things have never been worse.

READ ON at GQ.com

It’s in the air…

This week’s Entertainment Weekly declares a “Fairytale Renaissance” in live action movies.

Warner Brother’s spooky live-action “Red Riding Hood” hits theaters this month.

“Syfy’s original movie “Red“ follows a modern descendant of Red Riding Hood as she hunts werewolves.

The NBC series “Grimm” is going to basically be a serious, live-action “Hoodwinked,” as a detective investigates modern “Fairytale based crimes.” (The detective is even named NICK, for pete’s sake!)

For once, it’s nice to be ahead of a trend instead of chasing it.

I’m intrigued to see what Hollywood comes up with. Fairytales are timeless, and even though these are more reboots chasing original classics, at least they might remind everyone of the pure place where real storytelling comes from.

I’ve already gotten several comments about Twitchy’s voice in the “Hoodwinked Too” trailer. Yes, it’s me and yes, it’s different. It’s nice to know that so many of you are big enough fans that you noticed this from only TWO LINES in the trailer! As I’ve said before, different people are running this show now. I can only offer my advice so many times. Director Mike Disa was incredibly inclusive of me when he didn’t have to be, but there are simply some things he and his team chose to do differently. Each time I recorded my dialogue for the fast talking squirrel, I let them know what the “formula” was for creating the voice in the last movie: 50% faster in Pro Tools. That’s it. But they chose to vary the speed, depending on the line, and many times just pitched the voice higher without any speedup at all. Since I recorded everything anticipating the speed up to “gibberish level,” I delivered the lines according to that. So that’s why Twitchy is going to sound different.

Every time I was invited to screenings or invited to comment, I would say, “Twitchy’s voice sounds different, you need to be aware of that.” From what I can tell from the many blank stares and the end result, nobody really cared. Again, I got nothin’ but love for Mike Disa! He had his own set of headaches getting this to the screen, believe me.

And to address the amount of crass humor in the trailer — yes, this is indicative of the jokes in the film, sorry to say. Not much I can do when I’m not the director. I have it on good authority that Weinsteins were eager to push for more “Shrek humor” and kept tweaking the jokes with punch-up writers ’til the last minute. I’m disappointed by that approach, and it’s my hope that those ruder moments don’t overwhelm what we originally wrote. I say I “hope,” because I haven’t seen the final movie yet. Yeah, that’s weird.

If you go see “Gnomio & Juliet” this week, you’ll probably catch the trailer on the big screen. Let me know how the farts sound in THX.

Well guys, I guess hell has frozen over because “Hoodwinked Too: Hood Vs. Evil” is finally committing to a release date: April 29.  And even though that is the fourth date that I’ve heard, the TRAILER has officially gone online this morning, so I think it’s real this time. And yes, it will be released in 3D.

You’ll see that the sequel is distinctly different from the original in look and tone, but a film is shaped by its director and I did not direct this one. Forgive the abundance of fart jokes and crotch kicks — those were not in the script we wrote (okay, ONE… but that was really a “nerve gas joke”). Also, this trailer has some sound effects and lines that aren’t even in the movie. I guess the Weinstein machine thought it needed ONE more fart sound and ONE more joke about Twitchy not wearing pants. It’s weird to write something four years ago, have it evolve in others’ hands, and then finally see it hit the screen. And I’m going to miss the unique musical stamp Todd put on the first movie with all his original songs — not here on this one.

However,  I’m very proud that our characters have been loved enough to live on and to generate a second movie. It’s a whole new adventure with them, with some new twists.

And now I guess I can refer to myself as a co-creator of “The Hoodwinked Franchise”…on those days when I’m feeling really egotistical.

If you missed my set last time, FLAPPERS Comedy Club in Burbank is having me back on FEBRUARY 5th. Check the link below for showtimes and tickets. When I still do standup, it’s usually for private client gigs, so this is a rare time to come out and see me do my THANG. If you are in the Los Angeles area, I’d love to see you there!

FLAPPERS COMEDY CLUB