Big Bird Goes to Russia

Big Bird Goes to Russia was a proposed television special that would have seen Big Bird traveling to the Soviet Union. The program would have aired on television in the US, while producers hoped to also broadcast in the Soviet Union.Associated Press "Sesame Street Still Gets Nyet" by Fred Rothenberg, Nov 24, 1985
Following the success of Big Bird in China, producers at Children's Television Workshop began developing the project and made at least two scouting missions between 1985 and 1986. Jon Stone made a visit in the second half of 1985 to search for filming locations, and Joan Ganz Cooney took a trip in March of 1986.New York Daily News "Notables & Quotables" by Kathy Larkin, Nov 1, 1985
The treatment by Stone and Mark Saltzman involved a plot in which Big Bird and kids from both countries travel by way of a magical Russian nesting doll to recover a village that had been shrunken and stolen by Baba Yaga, a character from Russian folklore.ToughPigs.com "Bird in the USSR" by Joe Hennes, Mar 2, 2022
The project was already in development when US President Ronald Reagan expressed an interest in using Sesame Street to improve cultural relations during the Cold War in a televised speech given before his trip to the 1985 Geneva Summit. In response, CTW's Fran Kaufman noted that a co-production was not being considered, but that they were working on a special meant for filming in the Soviet Union.
While the production never came to fruition, CTW developed Ulitsa Sezam as a co-production with post-Soviet Russia in 1996.
==Sources==
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Category:Unfinished Sesame Street Projects
Category:Unfinished TV