Turns out the Muppets won’t be living another day, after all. The new Muppets series being developed for Disney+ by Frozen actor Josh Gad, titled Muppets Live Another Day, has been scrapped before it ever got going.
Sorry, Kermit.
The project was first revealed back in February, which is when THR says Gad and fellow creators Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis (Once Upon a Time) began to quietly work on the scripted series. However, creative differences emerged when Disney Parks exec David Lightbody took over at Muppets Studios, so Gad, Horowitz, and Kitsis decided to walk away. That left Disney with no choice but to cut their losses and move on.
“Lightbody, sources say, wanted to do his own take on The Muppets, while Kitsis, Horowitz and Gad felt strongly about their vision for the show. Lightbody is said to have offered the trio the opportunity to move forward with The Muppets in a new way, but they opted to walk away from the show entirely rather than throw away months of work and a concept they believed in. Sources note that the parting was amicable.”
Muppets Live Another Day would’ve been set in 1984 and directedly followed events of Muppets Taken Manhattan, as Kermit attempts to bring the gang back together.
Disney has found it difficult to get the Muppets to stick around for long. The 2015 series they launched on ABC had a ton of buzz initially, especially on social media, but that quickly faded away.
There’s still one Muppets project cooking at Disney, a short-form series titled Muppets Now which was recently announced at D23. It will feature celebrity guests interacting with Kermit, Piggy, and other Muppets characters.
