The Dark Crystal Prequel Series Coming To Netflix

Barnaby Dixon, creator of a puppet bird character (a kind of alter ego) he calls "Dab-Chick". I learned of him via an Adam Savage "Tested" clip. Barnaby is insanely talented, developing all sorts of novel puppeteering techniques. Shortly after playing a string of his videos, I thought to myself, "If Jim Henson were still alive and running the Henson Creature Shop, or if Dixon had been born a generation earlier, I strongly suspect Henson, learning of the young innovator, would have hired him on the spot." Sadly, though Jim himself has been gone nearly 30 years, his son was at least smart enough to recognize talent when he saw it and seized the opportunity!

Barnaby also has a fantastic singing voice and often demonstrates that skill in his clips.

 

The sets and puppets were almost destroyed by a fire if it hadn't been for director Louis Leterrier's quick action:

On one of the hottest days of the year, Leterrier caught a whiff of smoke while editing the series, only to find one of the soundstages Dark Crystal was shot on had caught fire. Alerting authorities, Leterrier whipped up a quick map of the studio’s layout so firefighters could quickly navigate to the blaze before it consumed the sets entirely.

“He drew it from memory,” [co-creator WIll] Matthews told Syfy. “These are two football-field-sized warehouses, full of stages. And he’s doing all this in a panic moment.” Slight problem: he didn’t tell the firefighters said sets were also littered with Gelflings, Skeksis, Podlings, and countless other puppet citizens of Thra.

So when the firefighters promptly freaked the hell out, Leterrier stepped in alongside them and studio security to rescue over 40 puppets from fire and smoke damage, including multiple Skeksis—contraptions so heavy that they have multiple puppeteers inside to manipulate, and can weigh roughly 200lbs.
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Wow, what a stroke of luck. That would've been a terrible disaster!

 

Wow! just finished watching this series - and my goodness me: the sheer level of world-building, exquisite design, magnificent puppetry and astounding acting is of the utmost!

I desperately hope a second season is green lit, as I’m utterly captivated!

 

Me too. Haven’t heard anything about a S2, though. On a side-front, there is a new Dark Crystal turn-based RPG on Xbox now. Looks interesting.

 

I just realized yesterday that we still haven't heard about whether or not there will be another season. It seemed to be pretty popular, and it got a good reactions, so I'm pretty confident it will.

 

Agreed. It would be a great shame if they put all that work into the production and didn't get a chance to continue the story into other seasons.

 

Plus, barring a lot of new locations and characters, I imagine the production cost will be somewhat lower since so much has been already created now.

Fingers crossed.

 

Maybe we should try and get #RenewDarkCrystal trending on Twitter? Put some pressure on Netflix, or at least show them there's still interest in the show?

 

Also, the most expensive actors are all gone from the show too. Which should lighten the costs.

 

And even if they do introduce new locations and characters, it probably won't be nearly as many as they did for Season 1.

 

Io9 has announced that a new Dark Crystal book is coming out, The Dark Crystal Bestiary: The Definitive Guide to the Creatures of Thra, which will cover all of the different creatures featured in the movie, show, books, and comics. It's being written by Adam Cesare, with a forward Brian and Wendy Froud and illustration by Iris Compiet. They have preview with the article, and it looks really good.

 

That looks amazing. Definitely a must buy.

 

Very cool. They need to keep putting out stuff like these to keep the show in the public consciousness. Hopefully they’ll announce a season 2 at some point, as well as BRD release for season 1, provided Netflix doesn’t somehow find a way to screw it all up.

 

How long does it usually take Netflix to announce new seasons? I would have thought we would have heard something by now. It seemed like it was pretty popular, so I had assumed it was no brainer that we'd get another season.

 

This might be more about how long it takes to do extensive puppets and a completely created world.

 

Do they usually wait until they reach a certain point in production to announce it?
I'm not sure how that kind of stuff works with Netflix since they don't have set seasons like the networks and cable do.

 

I’m sure there are those who know for sure, but I recall hearing/reading something where Netflix doesn’t usually announce until production is well underway. “Usually” being the operative word. Under the current circumstances, however, and considering how they historically have 2 or 3 puppeteers sitting virtually on top of each other to work a single character, I fear this show will suffer more drastically than most.

 

Yeah, you definitely can't have your performers 6 feet apart on a show like this.