It’s time to really meet the Muppets.
A new series in the world of Kermit and Miss Piggy is coming to Disney+ next year. As announced Friday at the Mouse House’s D23 Expo in Anaheim, Muppets Now will be a shortform unscripted series featuring the iconic characters. The project will feature the Muppets alongside celebrity guest stars in a forum that Disney describes as featuring a startling silliness and heartfelt fun. Muppets Now will be produced by Muppets Studios. Additional details were not immediately available.
The shortform series — which immediately draws comparisons to Quibi’s programming model — is the second of its kind for Disney+. On Thursday at D23, Disney+ announced an unscripted shortform series called One Day at Disney, which follows employees from across the company. Also announced Friday was Forky Asks a Question, a collection of shorts from Pixar and based on the Toy Story 4 favorite character. Those will be available at Disney+’s launch.
An episode count on Muppets Now as well as a formal launch date have not been released.
Muppets Now arrives as a scripted series in the Muppets franchise has been rumored to be in the works for Disney+ for months and produced by Josh Gad and Once Upon a Time showrunners Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis. Disney+ has declined comment on the project, which has the working title of Muppets Live Another Day.
The Muppets was most recently rebooted a few years ago on Disney-owned broadcaster ABC. That series kicked off with strong buzz after its short pilot presentation went viral. However, the ABC take — executive produced by Big Bang Theory co-creator Bill Prady — pretty much died on the vine and efforts to change showrunners and revive the show for the second half of its first season were unsuccessful.
Disney+ is set to bow Nov. 12 with a roster of programming from Marvel, Star Wars and other scripted and unscripted originals as well as a deep vault of library titles from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm.
