Ahead of the release of new Muppets series The Muppets Mayhem on Disney+ later this year, first look images have been released as series creators spoke to Entertainment Weekly. Marking their first television outing since 2015’s The Muppets, the series shifts focus from usual key characters such as Kermit and Miss Piggy to instead look at everyone’s favorite puppet band, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, as they work on their debut album. The band will be joined by Lilly Sigh‘s Nora, a rookie-music producer, her sister and social media influencer Hannah played by Saara Chaudry, Anders Holm, and super-fan of the band, Tahj Mowry‘s Gary “Moog” Moogowski.
Aiming to capitalize upon the star power of its cast – co-creator Adam F. Goldberg simply states “I mean, they have Kermit” – he and the show hope to bring The Muppets to the forefront of Disney+ programming to stand alongside other huge Disney-owned IPs such as Star Wars and Marvel. The Muppets has always treated its characters as stars in their own right, with characters popping up all over the entertainment industry – in 2015 Kermit and Miss Piggy appeared together on Jimmy Kimmel Live while the latter has appeared on shows such as The View and RuPaul’s Drag Race as well as gracing the cover of countless magazines, to name just a few examples.
It was from such signature blurring of fact and fiction that inspiration for the new Disney+ show first struck, as show co-created Bill Barretta watched Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem perform to “something like 30,000 people” at the Outside Lands music festival in 2016. He went on to wonder “what if this band went on the road? What if the band went on tour? And so, I started developing an idea for a show about the band because we don’t know that much about them.” Barretta and Goldberg, joined by Jeff Yorkes, embarked to flesh out the characters, with Yorkes expressing “we have the freedom to go anywhere with these characters — they’re not as well known as the core characters. People recognize them, but we have the freedom to fill out their backstory and do whatever we want.”
The Muppets Mayhem Will Feature New Songs
As the band embarks on the creation of the first album, the show is expected to feature not only a range of musical covers but original songs too, alongside a focus on the family dynamics between its human cast, promising “a real balance” between both aspects of the show. Barreta explained “it’s not Muppet-heavy and it’s not human-heavy, which is a difficult thing to do with the Muppets. You want to keep everybody interested. The Muppets have fun little beats and punchlines and good comedy and sight gags, but the storytelling [is key]. What’s really helped is to have some humans who are truly connected and have real conflict with them — conflicts that they experience together and separately and with each other.”
The Muppets Mayhem is slated to release on Disney+ later this year. Check out the new images below:
