The Jim Henson Company: History and Key Facts

The Jim Henson Company, Inc. (formerly known as Muppets, Inc., Henson Associates, Inc., and Jim Henson Productions, Inc.; commonly referred to as Henson) is an American entertainment company located in Los Angeles, California. The company is known for its innovations in the field of puppetry, particularly through the creation of Kermit the Frog and the Muppets characters.

Brian Henson is chairman and Lisa Henson is CEO. Since 2026, The Jim Henson Company is headquartered at the Radford Studio Center in Studio City.

The company was established on November 20, 1958 by puppeteers Jim and Jane Henson, and is currently independently owned and operated by their children. Henson has produced many successful television series, including The Muppet Show (1976–1981), Fraggle Rock (1983–1987), and Bear in the Big Blue House (1997–2006); as well, the company designed the Muppet characters for Sesame Street (1969–present).

The company has also produced theatrical films, including The Muppet Movie (1979), The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986). Henson also operates Jim Henson's Creature Shop, an animatronics and special effects studio which has created characters and digital effects for both Henson productions and outside projects. In 1989, the company entered merger negotiations with the Walt Disney Company, which were canceled following Jim Henson's death in 1990.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from The Jim Henson Company by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.