We’re Getting A Muppet Halloween Special (At Last)

As we’ve mentioned before, Disney hasn’t been doing a great job with the Muppets lately; they abandoned the Muppet film franchise, torpedoed a new narrative TV series, and stuck the gang in a bunch of video conferencing commercials which, oddly enough, came out just before the pandemic hit — thankfully this coincidence hasn’t spawned any “Dr. Bunsen Honeydew put microchips in the vaccine” theories … yet. Now, following the much-hyped release of The Muppet Show on Disney+, the streaming service has announced a new Halloween special — Muppets Haunted Mansion, because synergy.

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Despite the fact that this is ultimately just a mega-corporation remaking a forgotten Eddie Murphy movie with beloved puppet characters in order to boost attendance at multiple theme parks, we can’t help but be excited about the premise of a new Muppet ghost story that in no way involves Christmas. And this isn’t totally out of nowhere; the idea of a Muppet Halloween special has been kicking around Hollywood for decades. Even in the early 1970s, Jim Henson pitched a “Muppet Halloween Show” before The Muppet Show was even a thing. Later, in 1991, we almost got a “Muppet Halloween Project” in which Kermit and friends become “classic Hollywood monsters” — a wacky premise that eventually inspired a Playstation game.