More Muppet Show - when? - Page 2

I will say I honestly forgot about Golden Girls and Home Improvement, so you got me there.

 

I KNEW I was going to get called on Zorro the minute I made the post, so I'll also apologize for that.

 

However, you have to admit, even with those, Disney's track record for full releases isn't that great. Just my opinion and frankly, if the Muppet Show is finished, I'll be surprised.

Technically, you could make the argument that they haven't finished "The Golden Girls" since "The Golden Palace" (pseudo Season 8) still isn't released.

Does anyone know if the previous season set sold well ?  If it didn't, then that might be the explanation as to why we haven't seen the next release. I'm wondering if a complete series set will ever surface.  I'd also like to have Muppets Tonight, either as part of the complete series or as a separate release.

I'm sure low sales numbers were not an issue.

 

Each season of The Muppet Show takes a long time to release due to the massive amount of music that needs to be cleared first. Thankfully, Disney took their time with the last two releases and was able to issue them uncut. I imagine a similar holdup has been a factor in the delay of Season 4.

Muppets Tonight has, for years, been rumored for release following TMS.

i most certainly keep hoping.....!!!

With a new MUPPET movie in the works at Disney (they just did a table read with the folks at Pixar for their input) I am sure they could be waiting for a tie in release.  Maybe have season 4 for the theatrical release and 5 for the DVD release, or something like that. 

 

Might the new Muppet movie get the T.V. series going again....please!?

I want the remaining sets. In a perfect world, we would've gotten all  5 seasons uncut and with their original closings...ah, well!

Let's hope it's being worked on to tie in with the new film. Maybe season 4 with the film and season 5 with its release on DVD/BD? TSOD reported a few years ago that Season 4 was due in 2010!

 

 

 

 IF Disney had no plans to release it, they wouldn't have announced it at D23 at all. And the Mark Hamill can't be too much of an issue of Disney is making a series of Star Wars-themed Muppet action figures (http://www.nerdist.com/2011/06/star-wars-x-muppets-action-figures/)

 

Disney is being tight-lipped about Muppet stuff in general; even the movie (it took several days for the trailer to even surface online). So the lack of Season 4 information could be all part of that to keep the hpye fresh for the movie's release, if you believe in unicorns and fairy godmothers and all that optimsim crap.

I'm hoping that the remainder of The Muppet Show is released, because Season 5 contains episodes with Sir Roger Moore, James Coburn and Gladys Knight guest starring.

With the arrival of two MUPPET MOVIES on Blu...i thought i would express my hopes that the t.v. series might continue...on Blu perhaps....but DVD would be ok too!!

As much as I'd like that, the show is on tape, and persuading studios to release SD stuff on Blu-Ray to fit many episodes onto fewer discs with a more efficient codec (MPEG-2 and analog video do not relate to one another), never mind getting customers to buy it again. The music rights issues will not change. Right now getting seasons 4 and 5 to DVD without incident is my greatest concern.

 

I suppose the amount of Muppet action we see depends on how well The Muppets does (couldn't they have thought of a better title?).

With the premiere of The Muppets less than two weeks away, I'm really surprised that Season Four wasn't announced. Hopefully Disney is just waiting to see how the box office does, but man, do I want those final two seasons!

Maybe it'll be a tie-in with the eventual Blu-Ray release.

...of the movie, I hope you mean, because as has been said before, there's really not much of a picture-quality benefit to releasing the TV show on Blu, as it was entirely produced on standard definition videotape.

If rights issues aren't a concern, I might even have a sneaky suspicion of a "Complete series" type of release instead, though one would hope stand-alone releases of S4 and S5 for those who bought the others individually.

Yes, I did mean the movie. Although I disagree with the notion that there would be no benefit to releasing SD tape material on DVD; for one thing, studios could fit more episodes on fewer discs and use a better codec (MPEG-2 does not handle analog video noise well and it shows on any non-CRT TV over 36 inches).

 

Even so, I hope the future of this show isn't tied to the performance of the film.

I didn't say no benefit, I said not much of a picture quality benefit (at least, not as much of a PQ leap from VHS to DVD as from DVD to SD on Blu with a new coded). Then, there's the problem convincing studios that it's a good idea to market SD material on BD (perhaps they fear customer disinterest/backlash if they buy a BR expecting that all BRs would be 1080 and find that they're full of SD material, even though it might be encoded better than on a standard DVD).

Have any of the studios released SD material on Blu as the primary/only feature on the disc? I'm not counting extras on releases where the main feature was 1080.

I suspect the film will do well anyway. I think the film coming along, frankly, is our best chance of getting the rest of the episodes released, as this one has been stalled for awhile now, but the fact we didn't have a tie-in release with the film's theatrical release is a little worrying (I'm sure many were hopeful of the fourth season released with the film's theatrical and the fifth with the film's DVD/Blu release).

In a dream world we would have the complete series, with the first season unedited and the original Zoot endings (which often varied.) But in this world, I would like to complete the series. It has been a LONG wait to own this show....30 years!

What initially threw me when the first season of The Muppet Show was released, was the episode running order (the order they appear on the discs is different to the episode list on EpGuides). And wasn't there an ITC logo at the end of each episode?

It depends on where you saw it. UK viewers got an ATV logo at the end, worldwide syndication originally got an ITC logo. As for the running order, maybe they're on their either in production order, or in original UK ATV order. I don't think there would be a "set" original US airdate order, as, I think, this show would've been 'bicycled' and different episodes would have aired on different weeks depending on the city.

No idea whether the epguides.com list is the ATV order or something else (I'd say it's likely the ATV order), so perhaps the disc order is by production number?

It's possible that they could be in production order. Am just hoping we get at least the fourth season next year on DVD.

There has been quite a lot of publicity here in the UK for the forthcoming Muppet movie. I would have thought that it would have provided a great opportunity for releasing seasons 4 and 5 on DVD. However looking at the list of guest stars there is one guest star whom I think that Disney would not be happy to see connected to their products. I wonder if that is the reason why these sets have not come out - although a few episodes from these seasons have been released on compliation DVDs here in the UK . I wish they it that was the reason then they would release the sets as near complete as possible rather than not at all.

To whom are your referring? I perused the guest list and nobody jumped out as objectionable...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian K McLachlan View Post

However looking at the list of guest stars there is one guest star whom I think that Disney would not be happy to see connected to their products.
To whom are your referring? I perused the guest list and nobody jumped out as objectionable...

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He's probably referring to Chris Langham. Evidently there's something of a witch hunt going on in the UK right now.
I don't think it's the case, though. For one, Americans by and large don't know who Chris Langham is and for twa, CL started writing for the Muppet Show in the 3rd season. His name's already appeared in the DVD credits.

yeah, I doubt it's to do with Langham. If what you're referring to about his is what I think you're referencing, that was more than a couple years ago, wasn't it? Surely, the furor would've died down by now.

I think it's far more likely that there might be a lot of un-clearable (or expensive-to-clear) music.

For whatever reason, Disney seems to require that a title sell a lot more units in order to justify releasing it. They killed off the Walt Disney Treasures line despite the fact that there generally were no rights issues to what they were releasing and the sets sold around 35,000 pretty quickly. I too was hoping for more Muppet Show with the movie coming out, but if it won't sell at least 150,000 units, it doesn't seem that Disney cares.