Scribe Todd Berger recently spoke with Crave Online about Brian Henson’s puppet murder mystery “The Happytime Murders” and hinted at just how dark and serious this story will be.

“I want to try to make the ‘Heat’ of puppet movies. I want to be ‘The Dark Knight’ or ‘Heat’ but in a world where puppets and humans coexist. Brian was like, ‘This mystery actually needs to be interesting so that even if you took all the comedy out of it, it’s still going to be interesting to watch” says Berger.

The story follows a puppet private eye and disgraced ex-cop on the trail of the serial killer who murdered his brother and is now targeting the cast members of a famous 80s television show.

The rating could well be an issue for the project, but as of now “It is full-on R” says Berger, “There is swearing, there’s sex, violence, murder. There’s no way. Maybe with some work it could be PG-13 but as of now we’ve embraced the R rating.”