Kirk R. Thatcher

Kirk R. Thatcher is an Emmy award winning writer/producer, an award winning television, commercial and viral video director, as well as a creature maker and designer for both films and television. Kirk grew up in Los Angeles, and was making films by the age of 10, all involving creatures, space ships or broad comedy. Self taught in the field of Creature Effects he began at age nineteen working at Industrial Light and Magic, designing, creating and puppeteering creatures for blockbuster films such as, Return of the Jedi, Star Trek II, Star Trek III, E.T., Poltergeist, and Gremlins. He was also an associate producer on Star Trek IV, in which he had a memorable cameo as the Punk on the Bus, rocking out to the Punk anthem he both wrote and sang, called, "I HateYou!" Kirk has co-written several Muppet films including Muppet Treasure Island, and directed four television movies: The Muppets Wizard of Oz which premiered at Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Film Festival, "It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, The Muppets Letters to Santa as well as the Lifetime Network Thanksgiving movie, "Jim Henson's Turkey Hollow" starring Mary Steenburgen. He was Supervising Producer on the Emmy Award winning ABC series, Muppets Tonight, and co-producer on the ABC series Dinosaurs, on which he designed most of the characters, working closely with one of his mentors, the Muppet's creator Jim Henson. As well as his long form work, Kirk has directed over thirty Muppet commercials and web shorts including, Muppet's Bohemian Rhapsody, which has been viewed over 72 Million times, and all of Neil Patrick Harris' web comedy series, "Neil's Puppet Dreams". More recently, Kirk was one of the three regular judges on the Syfy channel series, "Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge". In 2018 he created and Executive Produced a series for Netflix entitled, "The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell" with Christine McConnell and the Jim Henson company. Incredibly well received, the series has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes! He also co-wrote and co-directed the hit Muppet Live Shows that played at the Hollywood bowl and in London's O2 stadium.