Fallout from Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash's sex scandal has put a halt to what might have been a cool film project had everything not turned quite so icky. Claude Brodesser-Akner of Vulture reports that Warner Bros. has scrapped plans to work with Clash on a film with a Calvin and Hobbes-like story based on a new character Clash was creating. The movie would have been "about a kid and his stuffed animal that takes on a life of its own because of the child’s imagination," according to a development document, and would have, as was to be expected, involved puppets. 

This was going to be a big deal: major producers were attached, and Warner Bros. had latched onto the project because it was inspired by a minor character in the Looney Tunes franchise called Ralph Phillips. (Remember him? We don't...) That said, Warner Bros. is breathing a sigh of relief that the project was slow moving since, as Brodesser-Akner, reports: they "could have wound up with a costly CGI family film that almost surely would have tanked and, what’s more, would likely have tarnished the careers of those involved." 

Brodesser-Akner explains that while this could go to another studio it likely, and somewhat obviously, won't. 

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Esther Zuckerman