“Power of the Dark Crystal” is set many years after the events of the first movie, and Jen and Kira are now king and queen. When the Gelflings welcome a fiery and an 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 earth, 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 U-mun request for a crystal shard, as breaking the crystal would disturb the peaceful surface world’s balance. However 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.

Production Notes
Award-winning animation director Genndy Tartakovsky, who created and directed “Star Wars: The Clone Wars”, “Samurai Jack” and “Dexter’s Laboratory”, was tapped to direct Power of the Dark Crystal in February 2006. Tartakovsky said, “The original Dark Crystal was one of the most inspirational and imaginative pictures of its time, so it’s a real honor for me to be able to bring the world of The Dark Crystal to a whole new generation.” [1]

As an auteur of such exciting and fantastical adventure projects, Genndy is the perfect director to bring to life Power of the Dark Crystal…I am sure that his visualization of Brian Froud’s designs will thrill fans of the original film as well as audiences who are meeting these beloved characters for the first time.

- Lisa Henson
Orphanage Animation Studios was brought on board as a producing partner to head up the CG animation elements that will be incorporated with the film’s live-action animatronic characters. Odyssey Entertainment was commissioned to represent worldwide sales and distribution on the film. [2]

Puppetry has come a long way since “The Dark Crystal,”. When “The Dark Crystal” was made, it was the first time that all those techniques were really refined to the degree that they could be put in a feature film. Since then, puppetry has come so far that the puppets we’re going to use are going to be much more emotive than the originals. In addition to that, we can augment them with digital effects, but very subtly.

- Lisa Henson
The script was written by David Odell and his wife, Annette Duffy. Odell had written the script for the original Dark Crystal film with Jim Henson. Odell says he had once discussed this sequel concept with Jim Henson. Although they didn’t get too far into developing it, Odell claims to have had a pretty good memory of the basic bones of the sequel idea. [3] Fantasy artist Brian Froud, designer for the original film, returned to design the new characters and locations. Trevor Jones, who scored the original film, is set to score the sequel.

When we created the original “Dark Crystal,” we created a whole world. It had many levels, and we already invented a lot of things that we never got to see in the movie. Now we have the opportunity to explore.

-Brian Froud
Power of the Dark Crystal is currently set to start filming in early 2007. Genndy Tartakovsky reveiled in an October 2006 interview that the pre-production work is done and they should be start filming “very soon”. Tartakovsky hoped to have all filming and post-production done by the end 2007. [4]

Lisa Henson (producer) says that they are currently planning to debut the film at the Cannes Film Festival, putting the release sometime around May 2008. Most publicity material cite the release simply for “spring 2008″.

Credits
Produced by: The Jim Henson Company in association with Orphanage Animation Studios
Distributed by: Odyssey Entertainment
Producers: Lisa Henson and Scott Stewart
Executive Producers: Brian Henson, with Ralph Kamp and Louise Goodsill
Screenplay by: David Odell and Annette Duffy
Score by: Trevor Jones
No further cast and crew announcements have been made. But it has been said that The Jim Henson Company wants to involve many of the people who worked on the original movie. Genndy Tartakovsky says he hopes to involve Frank Oz, co-director of the original, in some way during production [5].