Jim Henson biopic in the pipeline

The life of Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets, is to be made into a feature-length movie

‘Henson’, an original screenplay based on the life of late Muppetmaster Jim Henson has been snapped up by the Empire Film Group and is to be made into a feature.

No cast or crew have been announced as yet but a budget of $30 million is promised and the name of ‘Big’ director Penny Marshall is already being bandied about.

Exactly how desperate the world is for a biopic of sock puppetry’s high priest remains to be seen. And quite what 30 big ones buys you in Muppet terms hardly bears thinking about, but that’s about how much Jim Carrey trousers per-film these days, and this is right up his alley now that all his art-house Oscar-bait tactics failed to score gongs.

It hardly needs to be mentioned how far cinema has moved on since Henson’s glory days of ‘The Muppet Movie’ and ‘The Dark Crystal’ , but if there’s any chance whatsoever of Gonzo the Great getting the CGI Yoda treatment, this one surely can’t fail.

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