Revenge of the Skeksis

I don’t know how I missed the fact that the Henson Company has been busy working on a sequel to the 1982 classic of the Dark Crystal called the Power of the Dark Crystal.

This Skeksie is on display at the Smithsonian Museum

The movie is purportedly in production and the premier will be sometime in May of 2008.  I have not found a lot of news on this, but Brian Froud is the concept artist, just like he was in the original, and the director of the film is Gennedy Tartakovsky of Dexter’s Lab and Clone Wars fame.

The plot is:

Power of the Dark Crystal is set many years after the events of the first movie. Jen and Kira, the gelflings, are older and are reigning as king and queen in the Castle of the Crystal. After the Gelflings welcome a fiery. and unexpected visitor. to their castle they learn that the very existence of the U-mun people, who live in the searing heat in the center of the planet, is threatened by the death of their sun. There is apparently only one thing powerful enough to heal the dying sun – a shard of the Crystal.

The Gelflings refuse the request for a crystal shard, as breaking the crystal would disturb the peaceful surface world’s balance. But the desperate visitor takes matters into her own hands and steals a shard, making a hasty escape through tunnels deep in the bowels of the castle. The surface world once again falls into darkness – as the UrSkek split into Mystics and Skeksis. So begins the adventure of Thurma, a girl “made of fire”, who bands together with Kensho, an outcast Gelfling, in an adventure in the “inner-world” over the fate of the planet.

The movie production blog is here.  MTV’s original story is here.  IMDB entry is here.