The good news is that in the last couple of days, I have gotten very positive initial reactions from all the “powers that be.” Everyone is very happy. It feels great to meet those intense expectations, and makes me look forward to the notes that must be attacked. Let’s be clear: Notes are never a sign of a bad script. As I’ve said before, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE NOTES. Death, taxes, script notes. These are absolutes. If I ever turned in a script to a studio and got no notes, I’d be a little worried. It makes me laugh when I read internet chatter where people hear of reshoots and rewrites and automatically start wringing their hands and calling for the doomsday of a film. That’s movie making, people! You make something, you beat it up, you tear it down, you put it up again. Notes, reshoots, heated discussions over a final edit… all of these battles are so GOOD for a movie, and make the movie you finally see in the theater a better film. Contrary to the millions of worried internet comments, everyone is working really hard to make a Fraggle Rock movie you will love. Not “like,” not “accept,” but LOVE. We are swinging for the fences. I want this movie to change your minds about what a kids movie can be, and even what a muppet movie can be.

SPEAKING of internet chatter…

There’s already a LOT of it out there about this film. Holy cow. It amuses me to no end how the smallest scraps of information get dissected and spun into entire articles. And it makes sense that my own blog is on the radar now. Aside from the expectations of the studio, I am painfully aware of the expectations of the fans. Many of you love the Fraggles and cannot imagine a movie that will ever satisfy you. There are some who have already declared this movie a disaster and a failure, simply because it’s even being made. “How DARE they make a movie of the Fraggles! This thing will SURELY be awful!” Now there’s a hard customer to please.

Dealing with a known and beloved property like the Fraggles is daunting, to say the least. I am fairly sure that it will be impossible to please everyone. All I can do is listen to the majority of the fans, as well as my instincts as a storyteller. Even if you didn’t think much of Hoodwinked, don’t rest all your judgement of me on one project. Try to understand that I had many limitations on that film, and I learned a lot from making it. 

My wife tells me not to read all the internet posts. She begs me. But I cannot resist! I want to know what everyone is thinking out there. Sometimes the comments are hard to read, because so many people have already made up their minds, with no solid information. Let me try to put some good vibrations out there, for all of you who have started carving this movie’s tombstone already: Whatever blurb you have read about the plot, whatever snippet of synopsis you have seen in Variety, do not put too much stock in it. A lot of that stuff is limiting, and even wrong.

The Fraggle film I am making has many surprises and aspects to it that go beyond what you may have heard. Many have said that if Fraggles leave the Rock, the movie will fail. I look forward to changing your minds. It’s my mission! I can assure you that you will get PLENTY of “life in the Rock” in this movie. I am making sure that the film has lots of what made the TV show great. Then, we will go BEYOND the scope of the TV show. That’s what a movie has to do.

I know that to some, it might seem like the best film would be a 90 minute version of the show, but I think you’ll enjoy the new places that Fraggles are going to go. Think about the first time you saw the original Muppet Movie. (If you have not seen The Muppet Movie, go now and watch it. I’ll wait……) You have to remember that, until The Muppet Movie, we had only seen Kermit and friends on a video-taped soundstage. Then, as the titles began, we saw Kermit in a REAL SWAMP! Playing a banjo out on the water. Then he rode a bicycle! Down a real road! Fozzie drove a car. Miss Piggy won a pageant at a county fair. Real locations, cars, stunts. We saw the Muppets go places we’d never seen them go before! Their world became bigger… it became “movie sized.”

That’s what’s going to happen to the Fraggles. Think about that moment that Kermit rode a bike. Don’t you want that for Red, Gobo and friends? I do. I’m so excited, guys. I really think you will be too. 

So if you must chat on the internet about this unmade, unseen, currently non-existent movie, just know that it’s impossible for you to really know what it is yet. You won’t know until we make it. All I can tell you right now is that I look forward to taking a hard, flying leap at your expectations. I’ll try to wear a helmet.