Fraggle Rock is getting a new life on Apple TV+, both with reliving old episodes and welcoming a brand new series to life.
According to Vulture, Apple TV+ is making some big changes — and it starts with Fraggle Rock. The publication states that Apple has purchased the streaming rights for all of the original 96 episodes of the family-friendly series, and, at the same time, has already ordered a reboot of the series for a new generation.
According to a source familiar with Apple’s thinking, the company remains uninterested in using Apple TV+ as a repository for old shows and movies from other suppliers, the way Netflix, Prime Video, and Hulu have done for years. That’s because, per the source, with big studios such as Warner Bros., Disney, and Universal looking to keep their best and biggest titles for their own streaming platforms, there simply aren’t enough great titles around to make a library strategy work. In the case of Fraggle Rock, however, having the older episodes available to stream alongside the new content made more sense than not having them as part of the offering.
This is an interesting development, considering Apple TV+ shared a teaser trailer for a new miniseries called Fraggle Rock: Rock On! back in April. You can check out the trailer for the first episode just below:
The new series from Apple TV+ will see Fraggle Rock welcome the return of Mokey, Wembley, Gobo, Red, and Uncle “Traveling” Matt. The Jim Henson Company, who produced the original series, will be producing the new series as well. The original Fraggle Rock episodes will land on Apple TV+ tomorrow, Wednesday, May 27.
This is a big deal for Apple, considering this marks the first time that older content will debut on the company’s streaming service, which continues to be primarily about debuting new, original content. However, while there are rumors that Apple is ready to bring even more older content to Apple TV+ in the near future, this report from Vulture says the company is actually not interested in doing that:
According to a source familiar with Apple’s thinking, the company remains uninterested in using Apple TV+ as a repository for old shows and movies from other suppliers, the way Netflix, Prime Video, and Hulu have done for years. That’s because, per the source, with big studios such as Warner Bros., Disney, and Universal looking to keep their best and biggest titles for their own streaming platforms, there simply aren’t enough great titles around to make a library strategy work. In the case of Fraggle Rock, however, having the older episodes available to stream alongside the new content made more sense than not having them as part of the offering.
As far as Fraggle Rock is concerned, Apple was actually doing people a favor. If the company hadn’t picked up the streaming rights for the older episodes, that would have meant fans would have to stream the older episodes on HBO and then switch over to Apple TV+ to watch the new episodes. That wasn’t ideal, so Apple made it so that folks could find the whole series, both old and new episodes, in one place.
What do you think of the news? Excited to watch old and new Fraggle Rock episodes? Let us know!