Melissa McCarthy’s dark puppet satire “The Happytime Murders” was intriguing on announcement last year, but American movie theater owners got a significant look at what they’re in for during CinemaCon’s closing presentation on Tuesday.
Directed by Brian Henson (son of Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets) and unveiled during STX Films’ turn on stage, McCarthy’s puppet romp is as dirty, violent and outrageously funny as any individual genre title we’ve seen thus far.
McCarthy plays a human detective with a puppet partner, a rough trailer played for the exhibitors showed, who go off in search of justice for some fallen colleagues.
Solicitation (“You looking for some rotten cotton?” one of the grimier sex workers taunts), oral sex offers for less than a dollar, freebasing ecstasy through Twizzlers and brass-kunckle street fights were all included. And all of that was perpetrated by the puppets.
The closing scene featured a lengthy male puppet’s orgasm that resulted in quite a bit of silly string. It’s serious raunch to be coupled with the company who produced the beloved Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. But the theater owners were screaming for it.
Read the full “Happytime Murders” synopsis:
Set in the underbelly of Los Angeles where puppets and humans co-exist, “The Happytime Murders” tells the comedic tale of two clashing detectives, one human and the other a puppet, who are forced to work together to solve the mystery of who is brutally murdering the former cast of “The Happytime Gang,” a beloved classic puppet show.
Henson Alternative and On the Day Productions produce alongside STX.
Todd Berger wrote the script and the story is by him and Dee Austin Robertson. The film will hit theaters this October.