Depraved puppets ‘defile good name of Sesame Street’

The creators of Sesame Street are suing over a new movie trailer that they claim suggests certain puppets live depraved, brutal lives when offstage – snorting hard drugs through licorice straws, selling sexual favours to humans and succumbing to gun violence.

Set for release in August, The Happytime Murders does not actually feature Big Bird, the Cookie Monster or any other resident of 123 Sesame Street, where puppets have been teaching children basic math and decency since 1969. But the movie is directed by the son of the late Muppets creator Jim Henson and is set in a fictional Los Angeles, where former stars of a children’s puppet show are being gunned down for unknown reasons.

‘‘What really goes down when kids aren’t around,’’ promises the movie’s official trailer, which prompted Sesame Workshop to sue STX Entertainment in federal court on Friday, claiming the production company has ‘‘diluted and defiled’’ the beloved Muppets’ reputations.

Such scenes have been paired with the trailer’s tagline, ‘‘No Sesame. All Street,’’ and examples of director Brian Henson’s previous nonsexual work, such as The Muppets Christmas Carol.

Taken together, Sesame claims, STX ‘‘seem intent on seeding confusion in the mind of the public as to the association between the movie, Sesame Street, and its beloved Muppets.’’

The PR campaign has even gone too far for the Jim Henson Co, which co-produced the movie with STX, according to internal emails submitted with the lawsuit.

‘‘I am speechless that we were not consulted and asked for approval of this,’’ Sesame Workshop president Jeffrey Dunn wrote to his counterpart at the Henson Co last week.

‘‘The trailer is practically pornographic.’’

In her reply, Lisa Henson apologised but said she and her brother were powerless to stop STX from marketing the film as it wished. – Washington Post