The Muppets are slowly starting to reap the benefits of Disney’s corporate synergy and have a new series – on the web no less! Statler & Waldorf: From the Balcony debuted last week on movies.com and will be a weekly show where the two lovable Muppet cranks sound off about the latest movies each week. Also appearing is Pepe the Prawn (doing DVD reviews) and it’s a safe bet a few other characters will be turning up eventually.

Unfortunately – unless I am mistaken – it doesn’t appear to be Steve Whitmire and Dave Golez performing Statler and Waldorf (the roles were originated by Jim Henson and Richard Hunt and taken over by Steve and Dave in the mid-90s) which might be intrepreted as a decision on Disney’s part to make many of the puppeteers and their characters interchangable.

Update: It appears now that this is not in fact a series (yet) and was actually a one-shot test for what might become a regular feature. There’s no longer any reference to it on movies.com but the video can be downloaded here.