How to Watch "The Muppet Christmas Carol" Extended Cut on Disney+ - Restoring "When Love is Gone"

The extended cut of The Muppet Christmas Carol is now streaming on Disney+, but that’s not obvious when you enter Disney’s streaming service. Rather than giving the extended cut its own tile the way they do for every sing-along version, it’s been relegated to bonus feature status.

How to Watch The Muppet Christmas Carol Extended Cut:

Search for “The Muppet Christmas Carol” on Disney+ and click on it.
Beneath the film’s description, click “Extras” (by default, the visible tab is “Suggested”)
Click on “The Muppet Christmas Carol (Full Length Version) (89 minutes)”

For 4K TV owners, the extended cut is only available in HD. Alternatively, you could watch the theatrical version in 4K and pause the film, watching the “Extras” isolated deleted scene of “When Love is Gone” before returning to the 4K print.

(Disney)

About The Muppet Christmas Carol Extended Cut:

When Disney screened The Muppet Christmas Carol for test audiences ahead of its theatrical release (December 11th, 1992), children grew restless during the ballad “When Love is Gone,” a song performed by Ebenezer Scrooge’s fiancé Belle (played by Meredith Braun).
Studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg made the decision to cut the song, which is reprised at the end of the film (as “The Love We Found”) and also performed over the end credits by Martina McBride.
At the request of Brian Henson, the sequence was restored for the film’s home video release, which came out nearly a year after its theatrical exhibition on November 5th, 1993. This fullscreen edit of the film was also used for TV airings and is the version most fans of the film are most familiar with.
When The Muppet Christmas Carol was first released on DVD in 2002 for the film’s 10th anniversary, it only included the fullscreen extended cut, with a commentary track by Brian Henson. A 2005 re-release was the first time the widescreen theatrical cut, excluding “When Love is Gone,” was released since its original theatrical release. However, that disc also included the extended fullscreen cut.
For its 20th anniversary. Disney released The Muppet Christmas Carol on Blu-Ray in 2012. The HD remaster was only done to the theatrical cut, with an edited version of Brian Henson’s audio commentary. “When Love is Gone” was not even included as a deleted scene bonus feature on the release, prompting an online campaign requesting Disney re-release the film.
The deleted song was later added as an isolated bonus feature on digital copies of the film and eventually made its way to the “Extras” section of the film on Disney+.
In 2020, director Brian Henson discussed the 4K remaster of the film and shared that the song had been remastered in 4K for a future home video release. It has yet to be released in 4K on disc, but the theatrical cut is available in 4K on Disney+.
The Extended Cut of the film released today on Disney+ appears to be the 2012 HD restoration with the bonus feature song inserted where it belongs.
D23 recently held two special events to commemorate the film’s 30th anniversary. The New York City event showcased the theatrical cut, while the Disney Springs event gave fans a chance to see “When Love is Gone” for the first time on the big screen.

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