The Lost Jim Henson Live Action Little Mermaid is Bizarre
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- čas přidán 8. 06. 2023
- What happens when the magic of Jim Henson meets the marketing muscle of Disney and The Little Mermaid? The result is Little Mermaid's Island - a passed-over TV pilot that was the victim of an epic corporate merger, a bitter custody battle, and death.
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1:39 *"Anytime Disney gets a hold of something it's a success. So, I'm sure it'll be good for The Muppets"*
*Oh, My Sweet Summer Child* 🤣😂🤣
Glad you caught that!
Aged like fine milk.
I wonder if that guy said the same thing about the Star Wars deal
Eisner was riding the initial momentum of the renaissance, but as it slowed down, what he then contributed all turned to crap.
Oh boy 😅
Jim Henson was to puppetry, what Walt Disney was to animation. A true visionary.
True story!
@travisdacey526 very sad, very true. Just waiting for them to ruin the labrynth now....
@@hellkittyninja7237oh god 😶
@@hellkittyninja7237 Jennifer Connelly is salivating at this idea I'm sure. She hasn't exactly been getting "premium films" as of late.
What Max and Dave Fleischer was to animation
They invented the rotoscope. Recording real people to trace over. Disney later copied it.
Fleischer was massive with Betty Boop and Popeye in the 30’s.
Fun Fact: Did you know the woman that did the live-action test footage for Ariel for the movie (not the actress playing her in the Jim Henson show, but the woman who did the body movements the actual animators could use as reference) is also the same woman who voices Slappy the Squirrel from Animaniacs?
Good one!
@@theothervault Her name is Sherri Stoner, she also was the body reference for Belle from Beauty and the Beast as well! :)
I didn’t know that! Thanks for sharing
Who?*
*Animaniacs reference
cool
I am still so genuinely sad that Jim Henson died at such a young age. He was a creative genius and could have done so much with more time on this earth. I make sure that my own children watch his movies as they grow up, they are still some of my favorites.
Yeah, Disney really shat on a fantastic deal that was already done before Henson died. If I remember the story correctly, Disney was adamant that they wanted Sesame Street to be their IP and was being really aggressive about it. Henson outright shut that crap down and said it would always belong the Children's Television Workshop and Disney begrudgingly accepted it ... until Henson's death and they basically soured the deal by having a tantrum that they weren't getting all of the Henson's properties to put mouse ears on. Basically, his children couldn't stand Disney trying to take advantage of the deal knowing their father would never have agreed to it and quashed the merger for years.
Totally. An already messy merger made messier by the death of Henson...
Just wow 😅 that even worse when they acted that way after he died🤦♀️
So one more reason to wish Jim Henson lived another 100 years or so.
@@baxter1252 aw it's a real shame he didn't live past 53...it would have been cool to grow up knowing about the guy behind many puppets because Bear in the big blue house was from his company i believe and i was a big fan of that as a kid
At this point, looking at what Sesame Street has become, I wonder if it could've been better in Disney's hands.
Omg I got some little mermaid books from the 90s for my daughter recently. I thought it was real weird there was a dragon and flounder has a sister! This makes so much more sense now! Thank you!😂
Ha! Glad I could help clear that up!
I assumed that it was some kind of book series. Scales seemed out of place, being a dragon and all. The pink flounder I assumed was to cater to girls with a girl version of flounder but Ariel had already got that covered.
Maybe they needed more characters and that’s how she came about.
So glad his family protected his legacy from Disney ❤❤❤.
Can’t believe I forgot the Little Mermaid tv show - just had a flashback and am having oddly vivid memories now. Lol.
(Born in 1991)
A sad day. I heard while at Art School, hanging out with friends in the art studios. It made a huge impression on me that day! I'm glad his family have kept all the characters and the Studio alive.
1:39 "Every time Disney gets a hold of something, it´s a success..." aged like milk XD XD
It’s not a valid reason anymore, it feels like they try to wreck things and still try to profit from it.
To be honest, it would have been a train wreck if this Live Action series went ahead.
Thankfully Disney Afternoon got the Adventures of The Little Mermaid series.
That was a far better series and is just one example of why some things are better in Animation than Live Action.
Is THAT why we got the animated series? I remember really enjoying that, along with the Aladdin series.
Mmm and I liked that show
I would of liked this show as a kid…more Ariel and adventures
@@whitedragoness23 I guess if you were a fan of the Muppets and didn't mind the suspension between reality and fantasy of a real actress trying to be a Mermaid and talking to puppet animals.
You might have enjoyed this series when you were young.
@@TBoneTony I just said that! I would of enjoyed the series as a kid because Ariel was in there! I think the actress looks to old to play Ariel but at least she got the ironic bright red hair
This is a great reminder, the early (premium) days of Disney Channel, when most of their original programs were just live action reboots of their animated movies.
Sorry to say, kids, live action reboots are nothing new.
Yeah, classic Disney Channel has so many weird little experiments using their animated movie characters. And no commercials!
@@theothervault There were no commercials because at the time, Disney Channel was a premium channel, similar to HBO. Nowadays, Disney Channel, like most children’s entertainment channels, is included in almost every cable and satellite package at no extra cost, because the commercials/advertisers basically “pay” for it all.
If Jim could have gotten to work with Pixtar imagine the kind of stuff he could have done.
1:08 "Almost single-handedly revived feature animation..." except for An American Tail, which had broken the animation box-office record three years prior. Give Don Bluth some credit for lighting a fire under Disney's tail.
They really needed a youger looking Ariel, other than that, it looks like the rst of the show's rough edges couldve been worked out over time. It's a shame they didn't get that time. The world lost a true creative genius with Henson's passing.
TRUE STORY. What could have been...
This 'was' a pilot, they could have recast her had the show gone to air.
Nobody but Jodie would've been accepted to voice Ariel then (& now).
Harsh
Jim Henson should’ve been a younger man- so he could complete his vision. Ariel always looked way older than 16. Are you worried that flounder might be voiced by an old spinster too? Or maybe that’s just ok for Bart 😂
Jokes aside I agree about the rest 😉
We have been robbed of it’s “my bidet” as a Disney classic song. 😂
This show looks like it would have been absolutely enthralling to 5-year-olds.
I have to agree, as having seen the episodes myself, this felt like this would have been a show for preschoolers in the vein of Welcome to Pooh Corner and Dumbo's Circus.
I was hoping you would mention the books when you talked about the characters introduced in the pilot! I remember reading them as a kid and wondering why the never showed up in anything else!
Seems to occupy the same universe as Sing Me a Story with Belle
Definitely! Sing Me a Story, with a little bit of Dumbo's Circus and a sprinkle of Adventures in Wonderland.
Ooooo i remember that!!!❤
"Any time Disney gets a hold of something it's a success."
Maybe back in the 80s. Not so much today.
Little Mermaids Island walked so The Little Mermaid TV Series could run.
That's a great way of thinking about it!
I feel like Jim Henson could have been the successor of Michael Eisner and run Disney instead of Bob Iger had he lived.
For as much as Disney baited Jim Henson for years, Disney has had absolutely no idea what to do with The Muppets. The 2011 film was more a nostalgia trip for the older fans and was clearly made with a lot of love, but the plot itself was something of a criticism that the characters had long before dispersed and were living lives in obscurity. It bothers me to no end that for as beloved as the Muppets were to generations before Jim Henson died, there are now young adults that grew up without them and I highly doubt today's kids have much familiarity with Kermit, Piggy, et al.
If I were to venture a guess, I'd say Disney is pretty split about what audience new Muppets projects should be geared towards. That they followed up the 2011 movie and its less-than-memorable sequel with a series that took inspiration from _The Office_ made that clear. Yes, they've tried different approaches (the current series focusing on the Electric Mayhem being yet another that seems doomed to obscurity no matter the content) but in my opinion, the Muppets need to return to their roots.
That Disney hasn't seriously considered re-launching _The Muppet Show_ seems brainless. And not a _Muppet Show_ -esque variety program; those have largely failed. Bringing back the format, the sets, and the concepts that made us all fall in love with Henson's characters back in the 1970's would be an _ideal_ way to re-introduce the characters to the younger audiences while feeding the nostalgia factor for those of us that grew up with them. They already re-created the iconic opening and some of the sets in the 2011 film. Why stop there? God knows every celebrity in Hollywood would be tripping over themselves to guest-host an episode.
It seems there's been a bit of confusion over _who_ new Muppet content should be directed to. Especially after the huge success of Broadway's _Avenue Q,_ and the less successful Melissa McCarthy vehicle _The Happytime Murders_ that Brian Henson (Jim's son) himself directed there's been a lot of cheap laughs in the easy gimmick of foul-mouthed puppets. _Team America:World Police_ even featured a puppet sex sequence that, depending on which cut of the film you saw, bordered on gag-inducing. But what Disney seems to have forgotten is that _The Muppet Show_ managed to cater to _all_ ages with incredible laugh-out-loud tongue-in-cheek humor that went right over the heads of the children in the room. Could Disney pull together a writing team that could even approximate the original's brilliance? It's worth a shot.
When navigating Disney+, there's a banner along the top that calls out the major Disney franchises (Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, etc.) Even with the amount of previously-produced Muppets content, there should be a Muppets category up there, too. Jim Henson's legacy alone makes its absence unconscionable. I remember well the day he died in 1990. I was eleven years old and I was such an obsessive fan that I could name not only the characters, but the Muppeteers underneath each of them, too. Jim Henson was my earliest idol. When I saw the newspaper at the convenience store I'd ridden my bicycle to to buy penny candy, I was devastated. When I got home, my mother had already been warned in a telephone call from my older sister that I would be inconsolable. I was. I still am. My biggest fear that day was that the Muppets would never be the same again.
Sadly, that proved true.
100% spot on.
What a fantastically well written and heartfelt comment; I couldn’t agree with you more
Well yeah you’re right without that movie I’d not even know who they were 😅 I’m lucky to barely know about seasame street because the song was played at a birthday party I went to as a kid🤷♀️
You’re right there should be a muppet section too😅
They managed to escape into the public’s fear.
Even another part of the story before Jim Henson died in 1990 he worked with a director name Steve Barron who wanted to make a live action Pinocchio movie using puppets and animatronics they approached Disney for the idea but they were ultimately rejected which later in the 90s kushner lock and new line cinema the small company for Warner brothers are interested in funding the project after his death the special effects are now owned by his creature workshop which it became the adventures of Pinocchio since 1996
Such a cool little factoid! Thanks for sharing
When i was little and i found out Jim Henson passed away, I cried. I was born 7 years after his passing, his impact is eternal.
Didn’t know Henson was only 53 when he passed away, still pretty young even from Pneumonia.
He was a Christian Scientist and it is against their religion to go to doctors. He was basically on deaths door when he finally was admitted. Not sure if the admission was done against his religious wishes
@@thebunnyfoofoo - I never knew that, in his later years he was looking kind of rough, I don’t doubt he had some other health issues and he couldn’t handle the Pneumonia.
@@thebunnyfoofoo Not true, he was no longer a practicing member by 1975.
@@thebunnyfoofoommmm best not to lie, mate
Jim was a genius...no doubt about it.
Gosh how amazing is Jim Henson. Absolute genius and master of his craft.
I love these lost and forgotten gems. Holy crap this is amazing. ITS THE BEST
Still looks better than the remake.
Loved the video Jim Henson is the reason for my love of puppets.
How did I not know this existed???
Thanks for watching. So glad you found it!
I never heard of this kinda lost media story that's kinda rad and quite interesting.
So glad you enjoyed it!
I think it might have been shown in commercials, or there was an upcoming feature ad, or something because I know I have seen these muppets when I was a kid. It might have just been on the news or something, like Jim Henson is working on a Disney show segment.
Sebastian singing "It's my bidet" x'D
The Muppets in here sure look like the cartoon characters.
I know this will sound crazy, but I swear I remember this. I wonder if there was a focus group that watched this? I visited Disneyland at the right age that year that I would have been a prime candidate.
I never knew about this. Very interesting. Weird that Grimsby was a character on it. Did he interact with Ariel at all? If so, it's odd that he doesn't believe in mer-people in the animated movie if this is a prequel. (I'm probably looking too hard for logic in something aimed at a preschool audience.)
It's interesting the actress who would have portrayed Ariel, was a person other than Jodi Benson. I was under the impression that Disney was pretty adamant about voice continuity of their Disney princesses. Although, since The Little Mermaid reinvigorated their animated film department, perhaps that didn't become a consideration until after it was established they had continued success on their hands.
1:39
The lies 😂 They drove club penguin to its grave. Little mermaid island, and club penguin island both failed.
They should have refernced this for the reboot. It actually captures the aesthetic feel of The Little Mermaid much better than the reboot.
Haha he said anytime Disney gets ahold of something it’s a guaranteed success. Then came Star Wars
Still looks better than the remake Disney just crapped out.
That actually looks good!!! Those clips alone were better than the live action remake. DISNEY RELEASE THE TAPES!!!!!!!
Lies
Uh...that Little Mermaid looked like a 40 year old woman. (And wasn't HOT enough...Good singing voice though).
Excellent video! This is so well-done, especially with all the footage that you utilized. I’m definitely gonna check out the rest of your stuff- wonderful work!
Still not as bizarre as the Disney live action version. At least this one is fun and colorful.
The 90s was a time like no other
6:11 I nearly got Ariel a pearl necklace
I have heard rumors that Kermit didn't even bother to attend Henson's funeral.
Dang - that’s a pretty heartless move, Kermit.
It's a good thing we have a classy well done movie like MR.PEABODY & THE MERMAID.
For a second, I thought you meant the Faerie Tale Theater production. It was made in the 80’s for PBS, and it’s… well… I don’t want to say it’s bad, but Faerie Tale Theater had budget episodes and episodes that were big and expensive. Aladdin (directed by Tim Burton, starring James Earl Jones and Leonard Nimoy) is great. Ditto Beauty and the Beast starring Susan Sarandon. Their production of The Little Mermaid was a budget episode to be sure. But Helen Mirren plays the girl who ends up marrying the prince.
Man. That show was wild. It’s weird that no one talks about it.
I loved that show growing up! I remember the little mermaid episode. But my favorite will alway be the princess that never laughed. The Princess and the pea was great too!
This popped up my feed randomly and I subscribed when I saw the Rocketeer helmet in the background. Good video, too! Looking forward to more
01:45 Anything? hoooboy that did NOT age well...
Clive Revill was the og voice of The Emperor in ESB. Thus Disney's destiny lay on a different path "He will join us or die my master"
This blows my mind that it existed! Thank you for the video!
Henson’s death was very sad and I was upset by it when I was a preteen. I’ve always been fascinated by celebrity parent/ child dynamics and Bryan Henson’s life became sort of a loose framework to create a fictional character named Finley. My first novel, The Marshmallow Show is Canceled, will be published by Outcast Press this July. Jim Henson’s awkward interview with Arsenio Hall also loosely inspired my character’s working relationship with a fictional Las Vegas talk show host. Sorry for the promo, but I think the book may interest other fans of the muppets! My bunny character Marshmallow is an obnoxious but stylish puppet who probably would love hanging with Miss Piggy!
I’m glad this project got cancelled. I mean, the puppets look super creepy (even for Muppets), the sets suck, various characters are missing, Ariel talks down to everyone, and the storylines are super basic. Luckily, the scrapped puppet series was retooled into a series of children’s books.
Yeah - as is, it's definitely low-tier Henson. Would have really been interesting to see how or if he would have tinkered with it, though.
Jim would have absolutely adored the new Muppet Babies show.
Sounds like Disney just wanted his characters
A bit awkward, but meant very well.
The movie was filmed and released and then forgotten about.
3:08 was that Kirsten Dunst in that commercial ⁉️ lol.. the dimples
I used to watch this!!!! I have such vivid memories sitting on my grandma’s bed with my eyes just glued to the screen haha
There was a sheepdog on fraggle rock also i think.
this is so adorable. Mermaid Island could have been a thing at DIsneyland, where Tom Sawyer's Island is at (:
Probably what they were going for was another version of Dumbo's Circus and Welcome to Pooh Corner shows they had before in the 80's. Man, do I hate that Jim Henson died, but that show would have been pretty bad, if it had come to fruition.
Frank Oz firmly believes that the contentious buyout of Henson's company by Disney led to Jim's health spirally downward and his untimely death.
Yeah, I’ve heard that Oz is no fan of the current iteration of both the Muppets and Sesame Street. Such a bummer
@@theothervault Oz is 100% correct in his assessment of The Muppets franchise (which Sesame Street is apart of). Disney killed it like they do with most everything they acquire.
Looks like it would have been better than the live-action we got, lol >.>
Oh dont even go there. You know damn well that series looked rough as hell. I’ll take todays cgi vs any creepy animatronic they had back when making this.
@@BozeDoesGodsWork EXACTLY! And this is coming from someone who loved the live action lol
@@BozeDoesGodsWork Eeeeeh... looked truer to the original story. ^.^ Most of those were puppets anyways. XD
Flounders birth name- guppy #35
Tritons first name?
Redd
More than 1,000,000 bubbles were outsourced and hand drawn
All I want in life is that old English sheepdog puppet
This even looks better than the live action remake Shane it never got released xx
It's kinda crazy to hear someone in their 50s died of pneumonia in 1990. Sad.
Fun Fact: I was born the same year “The Little Mermaid” animated series was released.
Why does it look like they cast a 39 year old to play a teenager?
It was the late 80s/early 90s they could have cast Robin Lively (she was already in Disney made-for-TV movies: "Not Quite Human", with a cast member from "Growing Pains") had the big flowing bright red hair (also is Blake Lively's half sister)
It was kind of the style at the time...
I have a feeling that the Little Mermaid’s Treasure Chest books were going to be storylines for this show, but it got canceled so Disney went with another route.
1:30 It’s Ray Tannehill from KDKA!
oddly just now remembered an other Disney Alice in Wonderland, a 90s hip-hop Live Action TV series
I don't know why, but here I am. This was interesting. Well done.
In the summer of 1985 swedish tvs anual "yes it's summer holiday, wake up kidds" was called "Solstollarna" and the opening credit sequence featured a live action mermaid and she had no seashells... but those pearls... Ay Caramba‼️
This former 12 year old woke the frick up...😛
Really interesting..love Jim's work
Thanks! He was definitely one of the greats!
Of course -- LITTLE MERMAID ISLAND documents that Grimsby already knows both Ariel and Sebastian prior to the events of the movie. If this is accepted as canon, it can introduce some really serious plot-holes.
Imagine if Jim had gotten involved with Pixtar.
Omg!! Your Rocketeer helmet!! 😱❤️🔥
Random memory unlocked
Glad to have helped!
Odd Disney went with The Book of BoBelle Fett instead of this series
I swear I saw this on Disney channel back in the day. Course it could have been something similar. Then again they used to air a lot of obscure non-Disney stuff back when the channel was just getting started so it could have been during that phase.
That would have been WILD!
The music in this is better then the new one 🎉
seeing that footage it would have actually been fantastic..if they replaced the human actors too with puppets
Fraggle Rock is definitely my favorite J.H. niche creation.
Hi ☺️ new subscriber here. Thanks for sharing this interesting video. I had no idea! 😮
I’d never heard of this project
Similar to eureka’s castle, and Mr rogers neighborhood the little clips of the king and that jazz with trolley. Preschool show? Yup.
I love that line anytime Disney gets a hold of something it’s a success. Well look at how successful Star Wars is.😂😂😂😂😂😂
Of course they’re so successful in their movies right now they’ve lost $1 billion another billion if you consider lost licensing revenue and even more when you factor in Disney+
Little mermaid is my favorite 👏🏽💯🧜🏾♀️thanks for this interesting watch ‼️🙏🏽 you’re doing the world good ✅
Much appreciated! I have so much fun putting these together and am always thrilled that others enjoy watching!
Stil better then the new one that came out
In 1990 I graduated from high school. But it was a very cold winter that early 1990, and I got some girl’s cold and missed my graduation day. I was sick for 9 months, lost a lot of weight, and no medication could get me well. I didn’t get pneumonia but i did have ear infections where the drums burst several times with blood.
Does anybody know why Jim Henson, who isn’t a poor boy, didn’t go to the doctor and get antibiotics? Or did he and it didn’t work for him?
Please don’t be rude just because I’m a late 90’s kid. Be nice. Thank you
I can have an opinion on anything because I’m a living person now, stop being a jerk
This was so interesting!
Thanks! So glad you enjoyed it!
R.I.P., JH.
Imagine if Jim Henson made an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid either as director or producer using puppetry and not having anything to do with the 1989 Disney film
I mean, he definitely would have gotten my money
Fun fact the voice of flounder is voiced by Veronica Taylor
I dont remember this at all. XD. The only live action Little Mermaid movie I remember growing up was the direct to tv movie of Sebastian's Partygras. I admit I still watch it every summer, it was such a big part of my childhood.
Whew - Sebastian's Party Gras is one heck of a deep cut!