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1 article from 2003

8 May 2003 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Jim Henson's children, who sold the Muppet company that their father founded to Germany's EM.TV for $680 million at the height of the stock-market boom in 2000, are buying it back for $89 million. The sale does not include the characters created for Sesame Street, among them Bert and Ernie, Elmo and the Cookie Monster, which EM.TV sold to the nonprofit Sesame Workshop two years ago. Brian Henson told today's (Thursday) New York Times that he had watched with sadness as one suitor after another tried to take advantage of EM.TV's financial difficulties in cutting a deal to buy the Henson unit. "When that dragged on, it only got more and more painful," he said. "Eventually, two weeks ago, we thought, enough is enough." Separately, he told the New York Daily News: "This is our father's legacy. It's very important emotionally." Reporting on the sale, the Wall Street Journal commented. "Today, the Muppets franchise is thought to be distressed from the trauma of the past few years, and the big question is whether [it] can be primed for a resurgence."

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1 article from 2003