The Muppets' Wizard of Oz Teeth due to Kennedy now performing Floyd. The production also marked the feature film debut of Eric Jacobson as the performer of Sam Eagle, a character originally performed by Frank Oz. "The Muppets' Wizard of Oz" premiered on April 27, 2005 at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film's television premiere was broadcast on ABC on May 20, 2005, as the final "ABC Movie of the Week". The film received generally mixed to negative reviews from critics, who felt that the film was too mature for young audiences and that the cameo scenes and popular culture references were unnecessary. Dorothy Gale
The Muppets Studio under Senior Vice President and General Manager R. Russell Hampton, Jr. ABC, in October 2005, commissioned "America's Next Muppet", a script and five script outlines, but ABC was reluctant to green light "America's Next Muppet", and it never got out of the planning stage. Muppet Holding's new general manager instead licensed the Muppets out to TF1, a French television network, to produce "Muppet TV" in September 2006. In 2006, the Muppets Holding Company was transferred from the Disney Consumer Products unit to The Walt Disney Studios; with studio executives passing on oversight, the unit was placed in the special events