The Jim Henson Company and Neil Gaiman Are THE STORYTELLER
There are some television revivals that could be great. This may be one of them.
Fremantle has joined The Jim Henson Company and Neil Gaiman to develop a re-imagined version of Jim Henson’s iconic 80’s anthology series The Storyteller.
Henson was inspired by his daughter Lisa’s university studies in folklore and mythology when he created the original show in 1987. He directed several of the episodes, which were all written by Oscar winner Anthony Minghella. Even though it only ran for nine episodes along with a four-episode spin off, Greek Myths, the anthology won both a BAFTA and Emmy.
The live-action show featured the creatures by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop retelling European folk tales with the late legendary John Hurt playing a mysterious elfin storyteller. There was no lack of imagination with Henson’s characters, ranging from heartless giants, enchanted beggars, white lions, and human hedgehogs. They explored various theme within the folk lore, such as fear, desire, death and destiny, challenging the notions about good and evil.
Gaiman will be writing and executive producing the anthology along side Henson’s daughter, Lisa, CEO of The Jim Henson Company. While Henson has her degrees in folklore and mythology, Gaiman is a self-taught expert and has frequently spoke of his childhood love of mythology, which has molded him into the storyteller he is today. The reader sees common themes and characters from folklore in his works like The Sandman and American Gods, another project that pairs Gaiman and Fremantle. In 2017, he even released Norse Mythology, which featured his own retelling of several classic Norse myths.
Gaiman and Henson have not said which fairy-tales they are planning to do, just that they are eyeing several of them. As Gaiman sees it, the update work will be for the binging kind of viewer stating
Part of what fascinates me about The Storyteller is the stuff that wed don’t know. Who was the Storyteller, why was he telling these stories, was he a goblin, what kind of creature? What I’d love to do is an inside story that’s as long as the outside story. We’re going to find out a lot about who the storyteller is, we’re going to find out things we don’t even know that we didn’t know. We’re going to begin in a Northern kingdom where stories are forbidden and where the act of telling a story is liable and can get you imprisoned or executed. If you put a storyteller into that situation, things would need to start getting interactive.
He continues on about his respect for Jim Henson, “he was always ahead of his time, He found ways to retell folk a fairy tales of a televisual generation. The original The Storyteller was a brilliantly written, directed and told set of stories. It’s a terrifying and inspiring task to reinvent what Jim Henson did for the golden age of television we are in right now, and I’m honored that The Jim Henson Company would entrust me with the task of bringing back the storyteller and his magical stories, and sending him out into the world for a whole new round of tales.”
As for Henson, this is particularly special for her, stating
The Storyteller has always been a special project for me, having worked so closely with my dad on the original concept. Neil Gaiman is an expert in traditional folklore and mythology, in addition to himself being the modern ‘storyteller’ of our times. I feel like if Neil were an actor, he’d have to play (the Storyteller) because he embodies what the storyteller is, a skillful wordsmith who can entertain people with the power of the story itself, and not to mention he also memorizes it all in his head.
The current plan is to keep the same feel for the updated version of the show as the original, using the same out-of-the-box approach to hiring directors. Henson uses the Steve Barron stint of the show as an example for the look and feel they are looking to do. Barron’s background was in music videos and would “shoot in very non-linear ways, like a music videos with impactful imagery as opposed to conventional shooting.” Gaiman and Henson want to find directors who can make “the most innovative work with puppetry technologies and marry it up in that truly innovative modern way with word crafting.”
There is no indication yet on what type of platform The Storyteller will appear on except that Fremantle wants to make sure it reaches the broadest audience possible. The current generations exposure to The Storyteller has been through the graphic novels The Jim Henson Company has been publishing with Boom Studios of the last couple of years. Fremantle’s president, Dante Di Lorento says this about their upcoming project:
There is currently nothing like The Storyteller in the television landscape and the themes of these stories will explore are even more critically important today. It’s a real joy to work with Lisa and The Henson Company to bring their esteemed property back to television, and to be yet again partnering with Neil on another project that will further showcase his brilliant narrative power.
