Real Muppets Would Say ‘Screw Disney,’ According to Frank Oz

The Jim Henson Company sold off the Muppets to Disney in 2004 for a cool $75 million, but not everyone thought it was a good deal. According to Frank Oz, one of the pioneering puppeteers who had worked with the felt characters since 1963, the transaction changed everything.

While he didn’t want to sound like “a purist and a dinosaur,” Oz believes the Muppets fundamentally changed after they were acquired by the House of Mouse. “They’re not the Muppets that Jim had intended,” he said in a 2013 interview. “The characters are done by the same people, and my dear, dear friends, and they do a great job. But they’re very sweet now.”

So what’s wrong with sweet? “Their job is to be rebellious,” Oz insisted. “Their job is to say ‘Screw Disney.’”

Oz said he has nothing against cute. Cute little bunny rabbits? Oz is a fan. But “I don’t like pejorative cute,” he clarified. Post-Disney Muppets are “too sweet. And the relationships — there’s no conflict in the relationships as there should be.”

No one should have been surprised by the Disney-fication of the Muppets. The company gave the same treatment to no less a character than Mickey Mouse, who began his animated life as a cheeky smartass before being sanitized into a nice-guy corporate logo. 

Oz’s criticism is no doubt behind Disney’s refusal to include Oz in its Muppet projects since 2007. “I’d love to do the Muppets again but Disney doesn’t want me, and Sesame Street hasn’t asked me for 10 years. They don’t want me because I won’t follow orders, and I won’t do the kind of Muppets they believe in,” he told The Guardian in 2021. “The soul’s not there. The soul is what makes things grow and be funny. But I miss them and love them.”

Whether it’s the missing Oz or characters who have become too cutesy, Disney has continually struck out with its Muppet efforts. The Jason Segel movie was okay, but there have been many more misses than hits over the last 15 years or so, including Muppets Most Wanted, The Muppets, a Muppets Babies reboot, Muppets Mayhem, Muppets Now, Muppets Haunted Mansion and Muppets Live Another Day (which never even got on the air). 

Does Oz simply have sour grapes over not getting hired to work on the characters he helped create? Or does he know something that Disney doesn’t? “There’s a great purity in these characters, and that’s in part, sadly, what Disney doesn’t understand,” he told Tough Pigs in 2018. “As much as they love The Muppets and as much as they want The Muppets to be a success, I don’t think they understand that The Muppets come from purity, and they come from the performers underneath who’ve known each other for 30 years.” 

And the Muppets are no longer rebels. “It’s become sweet,” Oz said, “and so I feel sad about that.”