Kirk Thatcher

Kirk Thatcher is an Emmy award winning writer/producer, an award winning television, commercial and viral video director, as well as a creature maker and character designer for both films and television.

Kirk began at nineteen working at Industrial Light and Magic, designing, creating and puppeteering creatures for blockbusters 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”. Kirk has also written episodes for the Cartoon Network series Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and directed episodes of Nickelodeon’s series Lazy Town, PBS’ Sid the Science Kid and Comedy Central’s Crank Yankers. Kirk was also one of the three recurring judges on the Syfy channel series, “Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge” which had over 11 million viewers.

More recently, Kirk created, wrote, and Executive Produced a series for Netflix entitled, “The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell” with Christine McConnell and the Jim Henson company. Kirk directed every episode and the series has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes! Kirk recently directed an episode of, “The Kids are Alright” entitled, “Mailbox” for ABC Network. He also directed 3hrs of episodes of the Muppets new series, “Muppets Now” on Disney +, which debuted in 2020. He also co-wrote and co-directed the hit Muppet Live Shows that played at the Hollywood bowl and in London’s O2 stadium. He is currently developing shows for Netflix, Disney+ and the Amazon. When he isn’t busy creating or directing shows, Kirk is also a voice talent and has done many of the memorable voices on the feature films, Spaced Invaders, Gremlins II and the animated series, “Klutter” as well as playing Dr Thatch in Medal of Honor, Above and Beyond, released in December of 2020.

Most recently, Kirk directed and co-wrote the Disney+ specila Muppets Haunted Mansion, which received four Children & Family Programming Emmy Award nominations.

In 2022, he reprised his role as “punk on bus” in the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Picard. He also starred as the hunter Jovan in Marvel’s Werewolf by Night.

Kirk is an avid home Barista who loves espresso, animals and all things Halloween, Art Nouveau and Tiki!