But Leterrier is such a superfan of the original film, and so committed to making a worthy and authentic follow-up, that he vowed to use as much practical effects as possible. Director Louis Leterrier had a lot more tools at his disposal when making the Netflix prequel miniseries The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. The fact that the film was made in the pre-CGI stage makes its visuals all the more impressive - the entire elaborate fantasy world and its hundreds of characters were all real puppets, motors, and models filmed with in-camera effects. "It was, 'But of course.'"įilmmaking technology has significantly progressed since the early 1980s, when Jim Henson made The Dark Crystal. "There was never a maybe," Leterrier recalled. Former Hub executive Ted Biaselli joined Netflix, and when Henson approached him about The Dark Crystal series, everything finally came together.
Henson executives agreed and changed Leterrier's sequel to a prequel and combined it with an animated series in development at cable channel the Hub, making it a miniseries instead of a movie. He thought the script developed under Genndy Tartakovsy was "interesting" but didn't answer many of the questions raised by the original film he was more excited about "What happened before: What led this civilization to be extinct? What is the story of this genocide - what happened?" As he told Vanity Fair, he watched The Dark Crystal on the set of Clash of the Titans constantly for inspiration, prompting the company to ask Leterrier to helm its Dark Crystal sequel project. In 2011, Clash of the Titans director Louis Leterrier took some meetings with the Henson Company. This is not a project that came together quickly. (The film went on to earn $41 million at the box office, so Henson turned a profit.) Henson had about $15 million available at the time, almost all of that coming from royalties of licensed Muppet merchandise Holmes a Court accepted the offer, and The Dark Crystal wholly became the property of Jim Henson. If they weren't the money men anymore, they couldn't change a frame. Upon returning to his office headquarters in New York, he called his agent and informed him that he was going to buy ACC out of The Dark Crystal. Henson put them off, but when Holmes a Court, trying to ensure it made good on its hefty investment, wanted to send representatives to the editing bays to ensure that their changes were implemented, Henson cracked. According to Henson's diaries, reprinted in Henson: The Biography, the money-handlers thought the Mystics were "too boring" and suggested that Henson cut down their time onscreen and increase the presence of the Skeksis, because a test audience in Detroit responded favorably to them. The Dark Crystal's financiers at corporate giant Holmes a Court didn't seem to like much about The Dark Crystal at all. Here's a deep exploration of Henson's most magical and mysterious work - the untold truth of The Dark Crystal.
After more than 30 years developing a growing, devoted fanbase, The Dark Crystal returned in 2019 in the form of the Netflix miniseries The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Various other wondrous creatures called Gelflings, Fizzgig, Aughra, and Pod People play a role in this story for the ages, told entirely via lifelike objects created by Henson and company. It's an epic tale set far away and long ago on the planet Thra, where a magical crystal cracks and splits, leading to two vying cultures: the Skeksis, who harness this "dark crystal" for its power, and the Mystics (or urRu), the magical good guys.
That's the year Henson released The Dark Crystal, an ambitious, visually stunning achievement of fantasy, cinema, and puppetry. In 1982, Jim Henson showed the world than he was more than just "the Muppet Guy," responsible for the adorable and often hilarious puppets who populated The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and other family-friendly products.