Jim Henson London Creature Shop Closes Doors

By Rich Drees

Scene from The Dark Crystal (1983), the first of many films the London Jim Henson Creature Shop contributed to.

     July 13, 2005- The London, England division of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop has shut its doors as of July 1, according to a statement released by the special effects company’s parent The Jim Henson Company.

     According to the press release, Henson Company President & Chief Operating Officer Peter Schube cited “the dollar's unfavorable exchange rate and the absence of concrete tax incentives in the UK production market” as the reasons for the closure. Recently, the British government had revised certain tax benefits that were previously available to film productions budgeted over 15 million pounds.

     The release also stated that none of the television and film projects that the parent company is working on will be affected. Work for third party productions will continue to be serviced out of the Creature Shop’s Los Angeles and New York facilities. The London branch of the company employed 23 permanent employees and several dozen freelancers.

     “Jim Henson's Creature Shop in London was founded on the highest standards of innovation and creativity, launching our worldwide facilities with those principles in mind,” stated Peter Schube. “We are grateful to the UK film industry for its important place in our company's history and we are confident that it will remain a significant production center for us.”

     The facility opened in 1979, when Jim Henson arrived in London to film his all-puppet fantasy film The Dark Crystal (1982). Henson next used the facility to create the numerous creatures for his next fantasy film Labyrinth (1986). The Shop continued to contribute to numerous Henson Company productions including A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) and the recent tele-movie Muppet’s Wizard Of Oz. The Shop also designed and build animatronic effects for non-Henson productions including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), The Flintsones (1994), The English Patient (1996), Lost In Space (1998) and Brotherhood Of The Wolf (2001). In 1996 the Shop won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for its work on the family film Babe.

     Most recently the Creature Shop has contributed the alien Vogons and the manically depressed robot Marvin to the feature The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (2005) and the cable mini-series Farscape: The Peacekeepers War.