"They just couldn't get their head around the idea that the person who was doing The Muppet Show and The Muppet Movie, things that were so light and joyful, that he himself would want to deviate from what he had been doing. It was really surprising to people and they expressed a lot of doubt about it. Then, the film did pretty well commercially and it also did very well internationally. This story has so many universal qualities such as good and evil, the characters are not American and they're not from any place in particular and so it worked around the world."