Little Mermaid's Island

The Little Mermaid's Island is a show proposed by Jim Henson during his short time in talks with The Walt Disney Company. A pilot was shot, intended for the Disney Channel with puppets against blue screen and human characters interacting. Pilot was shot in a very old studio (once owned by Mary Pickford) in the SIlverlake district of Los Angeles. During the shoot, a DIsney Channel executive gave a pep talk to the crew. Witness to the pep talk quotes the executive as saying "This show will blow Sesame Street off the map". It didn't. During the shoot, the Henson puppet supervisor expressed concern to the Disney Producer about the use of pre-taped dialog and that live dialog performance was the preferred Henson method. He continued to say that this method would guarantee better lip-sinc and that the characters would be more believable (like the classic Muppets). Her (the Disney Producer) response was "Our audience doesn't care about lip sync". Okay then. Michael Eisner was rumered to say "burn this!" Jim Henson died within 2 months after the pilot was shot.