The magic has always been here.

Fraggle Rock, the iconic children's show produced by the Jim Henson Company in the 1980s, may get new life as a movie produced by and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. As reported by Variety, Gordon-Levitt will helm a new live-action Fraggle Rock movie for New Regency, The Henson Company and Lisa Henson.

The show, which was produced in conjunction with the CBC and an early-days HBO, was filmed largely in Toronto, and Lawrence Mirkin, the show's producer and a longtime resident of this city, said it fit right in.

"The ideas were right for the time, the environment of Toronto was in some weird way very impactful," Mirkin said.

It wasn't Henson's first visit to the city. He had teamed up with local VTR Productions in 1969, Mirkin said, and co-produced Hey, Cinderella!, TheMuppet Musicians of Bremen, A Muppet Family Christmas and others.

"Toronto was the perfect spiritual home for [Fraggle Rock] because the diversity and the ideas that are really deep in the DNA of Fraggle Rock are really how we try and live in Toronto," Mirkin said.

The idea for Fraggle Rock — a kids’ show with almost no live human actors — was first proposed by the distribution arm of the Jim Henson Company as a way to create a show that could be easily dubbed for a worldwide audience.

"Do you think we could create a show that could stop war?" Henson asked.

So what did Henson, the counterculture puppeteer, do with this sound business proposition? He gave it its soul, Mirkin said.

Fraggle Rock is one of those rare works of storytelling that is so fully realized it's actually painful to leave behind. The interconnected worlds of the Fraggles, Doozers, gigantic Gorgs and of course, the Silly Creatures of Outer Space (earthly humans and animals) are so fully rendered that the kids' show is as much a lesson in anthropology as it is on the importance of sharing.

The show is also deeply weird even for a children's show, with a spiritual and mystical core that puts it in the same pantheon as Le Petit Prince and The Lorax. Indeed, the whole series is a kind of Zen metaphor, with the four main species sharing a fragile ecosystem whose balance must be maintained.

Although the first episode aired in 1983, Mirkin, who is still producing children's television, remembers every detail.

"I'm just happy to talk about the show, and about Jim, and this wonderful, wonderful group of people," Mirkin said. "It had a big impact on the culture here. A lot of people came out of the show, either as puppeteers or writers or people like me, and it affected all of our lives ... It was a life changing experience."

Mirkin was a producer in the CBC's drama department when the show was created, but after 20 minutes of sitting down with Henson, he got roped in.

"Everyone knows what a genius Jim was, what a performer, how he revolutionized puppetry and television ... But he was a really wonderful producer. He would find the right people at the right time."

Part of that team included co-creator Jocelyn Stevenson and head writer Jerry Juhl, whom Mirkin described as the "literary voice" of the Muppets and responsible for the show's "lunatic humanism."

For instance, in one episode, the wise minstrel Cantus (voiced by Henson) has this to say about the meaning of life:

"Everything is important. Either that, or nothing is. I prefer the former."

Mirkin credits the show's odd home in the variety department of CBC, instead of the kids' department, for giving the writers (including the late avant-garde Canadian poet bpNichol) room to play with existential subject matter.

"It's about choosing what you actually see, and if you don't think something is there, you won't see it," Mirkin said. In the show, Sprocket the dog is tormented because he — but not his owner Doc (voiced by Gerard Parkes, who died last fall) — can see the Fraggles that live behind the wall.

"As much fun as you would think it was doing the show, it was more fun," Mirkin said. "We worked hard but we laughed all the time."

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Since the show's original run ended in 1987, Mirkin has been involved in a variety of Canadian, British and American television productions, including Hi Opie! a live-action kids show staring a Henson-designed puppet that airs on TVO.

But he still hopes the legacy of the Fraggles will live on, maybe even with a plaque to commemorate the long-shared history between the show and the city.

Although he's heard rumours of a Fraggle Rock movie for years, he said no one from the original crew has heard anything specific about the Gordon-Levitt film.

"I love Joseph Gordon-Levitt's work, I think he's one of the greatest actors of his generation. And the fact that he's a fan, is a thrill," he said. "I really only wish them well on it."