Anne Hathaway Making A Sesame Street Movie?
Anne Hathaway revealed that she is actively working on making her Sesame Street movie a reality.
It’s been almost 14 years since Sesame Street’s last feature film, Elmo in Grouchland, made its way into theaters. Since then, the iconic children’s show has been bought by HBO, removed from HBO Max as part of its controversial content purge, and suffered through the loss of multiple stars. Now, Collider reports that Anne Hathaway still hopes that her long-delayed Sesame Street film will soon get made.
The film, which will be directed by Portlandia’s Jonathan Krisel, was announced back in 2018. It will follow Anne Hathaway’s character, a history show host named Sally Hawthorne, as she attempts to prove the existence of the apparently-mythical Sesame Street.
This might not just be some random character, however. Sally is the name of a character who appeared in the very first episode of Sesame Street, being shown around the muppet-occupied streets by Gordon, who happened to be sporting a full head of hair at the time. If Anne Hathaway is playing an older version of the same character, we may be dealing with some serious Sesame Street deep lore.
Anne Hathaway’s character might answer some Sesame Street questions we never knew we had, such as: why did Sally never stick around? Why was Big Bird so much more dopey and cone-headed in the first episode? What happened to Gordon’s full head of majestic hair?
Of course, as any die-hard fan of Sesame Street would surely point out, this plot raises some major canonical issues. After all, in the 1985 film Follow That Bird, it’s clear that Sesame Street is not only a real place in the United States, but it’s also a place that gained national news coverage courtesy of Chevy Chase’s newscaster character. Assuming the upcoming Sesame Street movie takes place in the same universe, that would mean proving the existence of Sesame Street would be about as easy for Anne Hathaway as proving the existence of Utica, New York.
If the movie doesn’t take place in the same universe, however, that raises even bigger questions. Is there a Sesame Street multiverse at play? Was there a retcon event that took place after Supergrover teamed up with Bert and Ernie to stop the Anti-Count as part of the Crisis on Infinite Sesame Streets crossover event?
The plot description does hint that an evil mayor, played by Chance the Rapper, is trying to keep the existence of Sesame Street a secret for his own, presumedly nefarious, reasons. The place is probably at least 30 minutes away from the nearest interstate, so that’s not really too hard of a task so long as nobody looks it up on Google Maps. Anne Hathaway really has her work cut out for her.
Regardless of the wrinkles in what is no doubt meant to be a serious, cosmologically-coherent plot, Anne Hathaway seems dedicated to making sure the film gets made. While the pandemic put the film on indefinite hold, she implied that there was something about the Sesame Street project that really grabbed her attention. Despite being busy with many other projects, she wants to stick with the film even though the pieces haven’t fallen into place yet.
