Thinking about it, you could possibly get away with an outdoor all-year park in Northern Europe, if you put it really far North, design it on the assumption it's always going to be cold and sell it as a "winter wonderland". So you get people who want to switch it up from sunny locations in the summer, and you get people who want A Christmassy Experience in the winter. This might be an idea whose time has not yet come, though, since there's an obvious hook that won't exist for several decades yet. Until then, I guess we just have to let it go...
A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
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then you would have to put it on svalbard/spitsbergen, in northern scandinavia, may - sept is still above freezing.
oh and then there is the tiny issue of mosquitos during the summer.
if you just want christmassy in winter, the alps are a much better place( and dont need disney for that).
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Agreed. A outdoor Disney theme park in the north is possible as long as it is designed correctly. In fact, I think something like Norse inspired architecture for example would be amazing and could work.
The park itself would probably have to be unique though, to separate itself from Disneyland Valencia. Kind of how like DisneySea in Japan is a unique park that doesn’t base itself on the California Disneyland park.
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Well, if it was after the fall of the Warsaw Pact, it could be a celebration of the cultures of the Warsaw Pact, like Polish, the Baltic states and so on, using it also as an opportunity to create a new area of large influence and opportunity for products.
I just had a thought...
If Back to the Future is technically a Disney film in this timeline, then would Michael J. Fox essentially reprise his role in all but name if Atlantis: The Lost Empire were to still happen in a couple decades?
If Back to the Future is technically a Disney film in this timeline, then would Michael J. Fox essentially reprise his role in all but name if Atlantis: The Lost Empire were to still happen in a couple decades?
I don’t see why he wouldn’t. If anything, him previously working with Disney and being familiar with them makes him working with them again more likely.
Part VI: A Whole New World
Part VI: A Whole New World
“Every moment we are creating our new selves and our new world with our thoughts, actions, and imaginations.” ― Debasish MridhaChapter 15: Complete Freedom
Excerpt from Jim Henson: Storyteller, an authorized biography by Jay O’Brian.
“Jan. 1, 1986: spend New Year’s at Casa Laguna with Family,” Jim wrote in his red book in typical understatement. The event, an evening for everyone at a private cottage in the historic hotel, including estranged wife Jane and daughter Heather, was the first time that the entire Henson family had been together in a single room in two years. Any residual hopes that it would end the separation were quickly dashed, however, when it became increasingly obvious that while Jim and Jane still cared for one another, the defensive emotional barriers they’d erected over the years would require more than a single night to break down. The seven Hensons went their separate ways the next morning.
Jane and teenage Heather would fly back to New York on the 4th. Lisa returned to work at Amblin, where she was in pre-production on a third Indiana Jones movie. Cheryl returned to the studio, where she was serving as show runner on Benny Bunny’s Big Adventures. Brian returned to his studies at Caltech. John, now 20, left for India and Nepal on a spiritual journey and would vanish from contact. Jim would return to his beachside bungalow in Laguna Beach.
In addition to seeing his family drifting away, his friends were moving on as well. Frank Oz and the other Muppet Performers were expanding their careers in new ways, running their own shows, or making their own productions. Most had families or long-term relationships now. New and talented performers were being hired, but Jim hardly had a chance to get to know them. Even the “Three Mouseketeers” had largely broken up. Ron had gotten back together with Dianne and was rarely available for bachelor outings. George Lucas was busy raising his daughter and, with Jim’s blessing, had auctioned off the blue Ferrari for charity. Jim still had the occasional lunch or brunch with Ron, Roy Disney, or Bernie Brillstein, but more and more he was on his own. By February, Jim was in an on-again, off-again relationship with a young surfer named Emily Hotchkiss[1]. She and Disney Recreation President Dick Nunis, himself an avid surfer, both tried to teach Jim how to surf, with frustrating and amusing results.
Jim would, instead, spend most of his time buried in his work. From the fall of 1984 onwards, he’d effectively achieved what he’d set out for when he and Bernie began his Quixotic run on Disney: (near) complete creative freedom. Where the Wild Things Are, a property he’d been dreaming of producing since the 1960s, was set for release as a computer-assisted animated feature that summer. There’d been hits, like Edward Ford, Elementary!, and Dreamchild, misses, like The Bureau and Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, and mixed bags, like The Black Cauldron. Meanwhile, Return to Oz released in the summer of 1985, earned back less than half of its $28 million budget, though it did earn the Creatureworks a nomination for an Oscar for special visual effects.
Cheryl models a clothing line inspired by The Dark Crystal (image source and © “Henson.com”)
He branched out in all new directions. An idea for a new line of haut couture fashion inspired by the works of Disney and Henson[2] caught a lot of media buzz but failed to generate sufficient revenue, despite the assistance of former board member and fashion icon Caroline Ahmanson (though daughter Cheryl enjoyed modelling the Dark Crystal inspired designs). However, a new line of Disney branded popular clothing was selling well at numerous major retailers, particularly with teens.
Meanwhile, television remained a very bright spot with The Golden Girls and Production! being breakout hits with adults, and Muppet Babies, Thomas and Friends, The Three Musketeers, and daughter Cheryl’s Benny Bunny being hits with the kids. He was deeply proud of Cheryl, who he felt achieved the success on her own. There were, of course, misses. Little Muppet Monsters had failed to follow on the coattails of Muppet Babies while Starjammers[3], which mixed Muppets with chromakey effects, had failed to connect with audiences even within the dedicated viewing pool of the Disney Channel. Buffalo Bill was scooping up the Emmys, but struggling in the ratings. Its days were likely numbered.
Even so, he was willing to keep taking big creative risks on television. When Israeli businessman Haim Saban came to Disney with the crazy idea of re-cutting and redubbing old Japanese Toei live action shows with new American actors, Jim, despite feeling rather overwhelmed by the aggressive businessman’s “enthusiasm”, agreed to give it a test screening at the urging of VP of Production for Children’s Programming Margaret Loesch, who saw potential. They screened Saban’s Bio-Man pilot to a test audience of 5-to-11-year-olds. To the shock of most of the assembled producers, who expected a disaster, the kids went crazy for the insane mix of bright colors, campy effects, cheesy dialog, scenery-devouring villains, transforming robots, and exaggerated martial arts action. The rechristened Bio-Force Five[4] went into production and screened on The Disney Channel in early 1986, where it proved successful enough to get accepted on NBC’s after school lineup later that year. The series became the first of many re-cut and re-dubbed Bio-Force series, becoming a beloved TV kids’ classic for a generation[5]. The toy sales alone would prove exceedingly profitable.
Other fun and exciting things were in production. In 1981 Ron Miller had acquired the rights to the book Who Censored Roger Rabbit? against the wishes of CEO Card Walker. Hoping for a hybrid animation blockbuster, Ron and Jim approved it to go into production as Who Framed Roger Rabbit[6] with Mark Sturdivant producing and Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman hired to write. Animator Darrell Van Citters produced some exciting hybrid animation/live action test footage voiced by Paul Reubens[7] and Jim initially tapped Van Citters as director based on this test footage. However, Van Citter’s inexperience led to hesitation by Ron Miller, which led Jim to instead convince Terry Gilliam[8] to sign on as director and take Van Citters under his wing as a second-unit director. Despite his growing post-Pee Wee fame, Paul Reubens returned to voice the title role while Gilliam brought in Ed Harris to play Eddie Valiant and Kathleen Turner to voice Jessica Rabbit.
Hoping to make the movie a “salute to the Golden Age of animation”, Jim and Sturdivant approached Warner Brothers, Universal, King Features, Paramount, and other famous animation studios about the possibility of loaning out some of their famous characters, but were universally rejected. In the fall of 1984 when Steven Spielberg and George Lucas joined the Advisory Board, Jim and Sturdivant enlisted the two famous producer/directors for help. Spielberg was able to convince most of the studios to license the characters, meaning that for the first time in cinema history, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Betty Boop, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Felix the Cat would appear on screen together. However, Warner Brothers had a condition that their characters must maintain equal screen time, equal numbers of lines, and equal success as the Disney characters, meaning that, for example, Donald and Daffy would have to duel to a draw in their dueling pianos scene. Jim also insisted that puppets should get a nod in the movie, in particular his deceased friend Edgar Bergen’s Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, as well as other famous puppets from the era (Candice Bergen made a cameo in drag as her father). These “pups” would occupy a strange “halfway position” in society between humans and “toons”. As an in-joke, the Muppet Workshop even produced young Statler and Waldorf Muppets, who make a brief cameo mocking the Daffy/Donald piano duel before agreeing that they “must find something better to do with our lives” than sit around heckling.
On the pure animation front, Jim was approached by Roy E. Disney about producing a feature animation based on the book Mistress Masham's Repose by T.H. White. After a marathon-reading of the book, Jim gladly greenlit the project, considering its “Swift-level satire” of colonialism and the white man’s burden brilliant[9] and finding the test artwork by Andreas Deja “beautiful”. Spielberg had also “reintroduced” the Disney animators to the talented Brad Bird, who had been fired for insubordination years earlier, and convinced them to greenlight his animated version of an old comic book called The Spirit. The test footage was indeed impressive. Bird wanted to pursue a feature, but with Disney’s resources already stretched thin Jim convinced him to develop an animated TV series instead.
Furthermore, now unopposed by Card Walker, Jim Henson finally achieved his desire to bring the animation he’d seen in Japan to the American big screen. Introduced to animator Hayao Miazaki’s The Castle of Cagliostro by Disney animators John Lasseter and Michael Peraza[10], Jim found his first anime release in Miazaki’s new anti-war epic Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, a film that struck ardent pacifist Jim as a project that needed to be seen. The film, redubbed in English by Disney voice actors and titled simply The Valley of the Wind, was released under the Fantasia Films label in early 1985, where it went on to earn a respectful $3.5 million, earning a modest profit against the $1.8 million Disney invested in dubbing, marketing, and distribution. The audience was mostly made up of families, but also saw the notable presence of teens and young adults. It would be the first of several movies distributed in an exclusive deal with the fledgling Studio Ghibli, with Castle in the Sky to follow on the very next year, earning an even more impressive $4.7 million in the US despite a smaller $800,000 marketing budget.
Jim was also approached by producer Gary Kurtz, who brought with him animator Richard Williams and Disney “Old Man” Milt Kahl. Williams, in turn, showed him and the animation test footage from his long-running passion-project The Thief and the Cobbler. The test footage wowed Jim and the others with its incredible three-dimensional appearance and fluid motion in spite of being wholly hand drawn. Despite hesitation from Frank Wells given William’s well-earned reputation for failing to meet deadlines or stay within budgets, they agreed to co-produce and distribute the film in partnership with Amblin. “All he needs is time,” Jim assured Frank.
On the live action front, The Journey of Natty Gann was in production, soon to be the latest live action release under the Disney label. Jim found the story “wonderful” and hoped that it would do well. The Neverending Story 2 was set for release that summer. While working with Maurice Sendak on Wild Things, Jim was introduced to Sendak’s latest book, Outside Over There, which they both noticed had a serendipitously strong resemblance to the basic plot ideas Jim and Brian Froud had developed for The Labyrinth[11]. The three made a plan to combine their ideas into a single production, which Sendak would help write. Despite the earlier urging of his now-missing son John to hire David Bowie to perform the villainous Goblin King, Jim relented to the consensus of the Executive Committee[12] to go with the more famous and marketable Michael Jackson, with whom Disney already maintained a professional relationship, including an upcoming “4D” show based on Peter Pan.
Frank Oz and Richard Hunt, meanwhile, had returned from New York after setting up the Muppets Waaay Off Broadway stage review, and dragged with them composer Alan Menken and writer/lyricist Howard Ashman. While Off-Off Broadway, Oz and Hunt had seen, and then helped to refine the puppetry for, a neighboring production based on the Roger Corman B-movie Little Shop of Horrors. The four were excited to do a cinematic version of Little Shop and wanted Frank to direct. The openly gay Ashman had always wanted to work for Disney, but expressed worries about his sexuality being accepted by the notoriously conservative organization[13]. However, the sympathetic (for the time) portrayals of gay and trans characters on The Ballad of Edward Ford and testimony from the openly gay Hunt that “no one had ever said anything to him” made Ashman willing to take the risk. Jim asked Menken and Ashman if they wanted to do the music for Mistress Masham’s Repose. They almost immediately said “yes”.
While cinematic productions were reaching a crescendo, Television produced several new opportunities as well. Bernie Brillstein finally convinced Jim to go after an idea Bernie had been pushing for years. Tentatively titled “The Puppet Man”, it would follow the host of a struggling kid’s puppet show called “A Time for Dragons” as he dealt with the stresses and rewards of life outside the show. Bernie had always suggested that Jim could perform the lead role, though Jim’s increasingly full schedule made this a non-starter. He barely had time to redub the audio for his Sesame Street and Muppet characters, all now being performed by others!
Thanks to the television productions, old friends from the past reentered Jim’s life as well. While visiting the set of The Golden Girls, Jim became reacquainted with an old friend and collaborator currently writing for the show, Tom Whedon, who’d written the Muppets Hey, Cinderella! special in 1969 and whom Jim had worked alongside at the Children’s Television Workshop, where Whedon had written for The Electric Company. The two agreed that they should work together again. Jim presented Tom with an idea for a semi-self-aware experimental TV program with the working title “Inner-Tube”, where guest stars would become trapped for a while inside the world of television. “Wow,” said Tom, “my son Joss would love this crazy idea.”
Several productions were now in the pipeline, the most Disney had handled in years, and Frank Wells had a new way of paying for it all. He signed a deal with Silver Screen Partners II, a consortium of corporations who helped fund cinematic productions as an elaborate tax dodge. The “Partners” would cover some or all of the production costs and then, since “Hollywood accounting” ensured that no movie ever officially turned a profit, accept the inevitable “loss” from the production as a tax write-off while Disney got to defray its funding risks. It was a “win-win” that Jim honestly found more than a bit shady, but agreed not to openly oppose on the advice of Bernie Brillstein and Al Gottesman.
Throughout the ups and downs, the year had been a success, both artistically and financially. Between his and Tom Wilhite’s productions, they’d reinvigorated the Disney brand in ways even Walt could not have imagined. Meanwhile, the increased park prices were bringing in much needed profits and Frank Wells and Stan Kinsey were reducing overhead and streamlining management, simultaneously giving Jim the funding that he needed to pay for the productions while removing the remaining bureaucratic obstacles that held him back.
And it had all brought critical and peer acclaim as well. Over the past year, projects created or greenlit by Jim and his creative staff had won Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and Tony awards. “I have an EGOT by proxy,” he humorously told Bernie Brillstein, who was well on the way to an EGOT himself.
“Jim,” said Bernie, “Enjoy it. These are the ‘good old days.’”
[1] Fictional.
[2] Jim tried this idea in our timeline with a Dark Crystal inspired high fashion line. It failed to make much of a dent in the high fashion industry, but was interesting to say the least.
[3] Evolved out of Jim’s “Starboppers” idea that never got produced in our timeline.
[4] @nick_crenshaw82 called it!
[5] Yes, this is basically the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers a few years earlier. If anyone is going to greenlight Saban’s crazy ideas in ’85 you know it will be Henson, particularly with Loesch on the team (she was the one who greenlit Power Rangers in our timeline; more on how she ends up on the team later). While it is violent, the violence is so campy and stylistic (like with superheroes or Muppets) that it likely would be considered harmless by Henson compared to the gun-heavy “war-promoting” stuff like GI Joe.
[6] Question mark removed due to the old Hollywood myth that a question mark in the title will curse a picture.
[7] Everything up to this point mirrors our timeline, where after a two-year production gap Eisner and Katzenberg produced it in collaboration with Amblin. Spielberg then hired Robert Zemeckis to direct, and Zemeckis insisted on hiring “the best animator in the world” as he saw it, British animator Richard Williams, who’d done the animation for The Pink Panther. Williams, meanwhile, took the opportunity to share his passion-project in progress with the assembled animators, The Thief and the Cobbler, whose amazingly three-dimensional hand-drawn animation amazed Spielberg, who (briefly) agreed to help fund the effort while Disney agreed to distribute it. Disney soon dropped out of the distribution deal.
[8] Offered the role in this timeline, but turned it down due to “pure laziness” as he put it.
[9] Eisner, on the other hand, hated it and killed it on the spot when Roy presented it.
[10] Peraza cites it as an inspiration for the Big Ben scene in Basil of Baker Street/The Great Mouse Detective.
[11] In our timeline, Jim was apparently not aware of the Sendak book when he went into production on Labyrinth. A near-lawsuit resulted in a credits disclaimer recognizing Sendak’s “Inspiration”.
[12] Maybe not complete creative freedom!
[13] He had similar reservations in our timeline. When Eisner removed the ban on same-sex dancing at the Disney parks he changed his mind.
What a year for Jim Henson!
I am now very worried for John Henson. Be back safe.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit directed by Terry Gilliam will be somewhat even more insane than the OTL movie then, esp with extra guest stars/cameos.
Bio-Force Five - sounds a cheesy as OTL, not one even my younger self would have watched. The Ghibli stuff however...
The Labyrinth with Jackson as the Goblin King? That would be something, does he wear the same... tight... costume?
Little Shop of Horrors - always one of my favourites. Great show. Good luck.
Inner-Tube sounds like something Weird Al Yankovic should be on!
4D Peter Pan? Can you tell us more from this please?
The Queen Mary/Seaworld thing I was talking about was Port Disney - I'd love to see a Henson made 'Atlantic Adventure' great ocean liner project set on-board. The Queen deserves the best treatment please.
Another brilliant chapter.
I am now very worried for John Henson. Be back safe.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit directed by Terry Gilliam will be somewhat even more insane than the OTL movie then, esp with extra guest stars/cameos.
Bio-Force Five - sounds a cheesy as OTL, not one even my younger self would have watched. The Ghibli stuff however...
The Labyrinth with Jackson as the Goblin King? That would be something, does he wear the same... tight... costume?
Little Shop of Horrors - always one of my favourites. Great show. Good luck.
Inner-Tube sounds like something Weird Al Yankovic should be on!
4D Peter Pan? Can you tell us more from this please?
The Queen Mary/Seaworld thing I was talking about was Port Disney - I'd love to see a Henson made 'Atlantic Adventure' great ocean liner project set on-board. The Queen deserves the best treatment please.
Another brilliant chapter.
Damn Disney is becoming a real behemoth, even more so then our timeline. I like it, but I do get the gut feeling the nineties aren't going to be a kind decade for Henson's Disney.
Random thought, but how about for this fourth Indiana Jones film you could do something indigenous, like something aztec or the lost Navajo cities of gold like Quivira; maybe even be about addressing the stereotypes of people of colour that pervade the time and the franchise of a whole.
Random thought, but how about for this fourth Indiana Jones film you could do something indigenous, like something aztec or the lost Navajo cities of gold like Quivira; maybe even be about addressing the stereotypes of people of colour that pervade the time and the franchise of a whole.
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Sounds like something he would make, honestly. I'm intrigued by the line 'where guest stars would become trapped for a while'... making the show sound like a cross between an Escape Room, game show, and The Tonight Show.
Perhaps Orion execs don't decide to jump the gun and not release UHF against the big guns of 1989, assuming Indiana Jones 4, Licence to Kill, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Ghostbusters II, Lethal Weapon 2 and Batman (1989) will all exist in someway here.
Here’s hoping The Little Mermaid can still happen in this timeline, with Ashman and Menken now onboard Disney. Ashman probably will bring in Jodie Benson to do the voice of a character in whatever film he does either way, though hopefully it’s still Ariel here as well.
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There was a plan to turn the historic old Battersea Power Station into an indoor theme park. Could someone actually accomplish that in this timeline? I just love "out-there" concepts like that.
Plus Disney's competitors in the theme park industry aren't sitting still.
Plus Disney's competitors in the theme park industry aren't sitting still.
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Battersea i presume?
at one time when the building of the german nuclear reactor at kalkar was stopped & cancelled, there was also trying to turn into a themepark "Kalkar Kernwasser wunderland"
lots of ideas floating around
Yea, hit you all with a lot today! Jackson will wear a completely different inappropriate costume. More on Pan 4D and Lbyrinth coming up. Ah, Port Disney. Stay tuned on that and other non-Disney parks. 📺
It's a third Indy flick in the works at the moment. What became Last Crusade IOTL. Stay tuned on that front, too.
Inner-Tube was an OTL idea of Henson's that eventually evolved due to studio interference into the Jim Henson Hour.
A taste of what we missed out on OTL.
It kinda reminds me of Spitting Image.
To those who are worried for Jim Henson in this timeline, he can always have one of his children take over the company when he dies...
Right?
Right?
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