The cult classic children’s show Fraggle Rock, co-created by Bermudian artist Michael Frith and loosely inspired by the Island’s Crystal Caves, is finally set to hit the big screen.

“The Fraggle community is all abuzz and e-mails have been bouncing around, but so far it seems to be strictly in the hands, eyes and minds of the producers,” Mr Frith told The Royal Gazette.

“I’ve heard from a number of friends in Toronto, where we shot it. Let’s wait and see if we hear anything official about it.”

The show, which aired from 1983 to 1987, was the brainchild of the late Jim Henson, a United States puppeteer best associated with The Muppets.

Hopes from fans to see a Fraggles movie have been talked about for at least a decade, Mr Frith said. The show’s cave-dwelling creatures were an international success.

“As always with Jim Henson, grand plans are made, great announcements are announced,” he said.

“You think, ‘gee, if it happens, you think they’ll have a place for me?’ It’s entirely conceivable they may look for a whole new company to do it, or they may look to some old hand.”

Mr Henson, who died in 1990, founded the Jim Henson Company in 1958. His family sold the company in 2000 and bought it back four years later, although the Muppets were then sold to The Walt Disney Company.

Sequel hopes abounded for both the Fraggles and the groundbreaking 1982 fantasy The Dark Crystal.

With the announcement that US actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt would produce a live-action Fraggles adaptation, that dream appeared to become a reality.

Mr Frith called the news “wonderful”, but admitted that he knew little of Mr Gordon-Levitt, who appeared in such recent blockbusters as Inception in 2010 and 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises.

“My grandkids think he’s great, so that’s good in my book,” he added.

Mr Frith said he’d been pleased to hear that puppetry and live action was planned, although he remains intrigued by the evolving techniques of computer generated imagery, or CGI.

“I’m a great believer in what CGI can do; we were very early proponents of it,” he said, recalling seeing rudimentary flight simulations in the early 1980s before CGI was even being discussed.

In last week’s statement, Mr Gordon-Levitt said the Henson creations on Sesame Street and then Fraggle Rock had provided him with “the first on-screen personas I ever loved”.

The show’s raucous opening theme ranges through tunnels and caves, and its connection to Bermuda is local legend.

Part of the show’s genesis was the classic Bermudian tale of the Crystal Caves getting discovered by two children hunting for a lost cricket ball.

Mr Frith said the story had haunted him since his childhood.

“You put yourself in that kid’s shoes ... to go in there and shine the light around and you’re in this magical place,” he told The Mid-Ocean News in 2004.

“And I thought you know, there’s something so powerful in that story. There’s something about how under our feet, behind the skirting board, who knows where?

“There is this magic that’s all around us. At any moment, through some accident, through some design, however it may happen, suddenly you could find yourself in that place.”