Brian Henson Shares Deepened Bond He Formed with Father, Jim, While Working Together on ‘Labyrinth’ (Exclusive)

Brian Henson has spent his life building ambitious, imaginative worlds beloved by people of all ages.

As a filmmaker, puppeteer, and the longtime creative force behind The Jim Henson Company, he has built a career rooted in storytelling, technical innovation, and leadership.

While the 62-year-old is, of course, the son of late, legendary Muppets creator Jim Henson, Brian has long established himself as an artist in his own right.

One film he’s worked on that remains uniquely personal is Labyrinth – the 1986 fantasy epic directed by his father, featuring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly.

With its return to theaters this January, Henson is eager for audiences to rediscover the film on the big screen 40 years later.

Henson knew long before Labyrinth that he wanted to follow in his father’s creative footsteps.

As a teenager, he spent school breaks on sets; learning puppetry, mechanics, and performance from the inside out.

By the early 1980s, he was working professionally on major productions and developing an affinity for complex animatronic characters.

That path eventually took him to England, where he worked on several films unrelated to his father’s company, like Return to Oz, and quietly built a reputation of his own.

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When his father began preparing Labyrinth and was in need of a significantly larger puppeteering team than usual, 22-year-old Henson was brought on not simply as family, but as a solution.

“[My father] asked me to be the puppeteer coordinator on Labyrinth and to train local puppeteers,” Henson tells PEOPLE exclusively, adding that he was also cast as the voice the goblin, Hoggle – one of the film’s central characters.

The work he was assigned on the film aligned perfectly with Henson’s growing specialty at the time.

“Those early films were – and a lot of my work were – the more complicated animatronic characters. That was sort of my specialty,” he shares. “And Labyrinth was a whole lot of complicated animatronic characters. And so it was a good fit.”

More than anything, the experience gave Henson a sense of belonging that had nothing to do with his last name.

“It had a subconscious effect on me of feeling like…I’m here because this is what I do, not just because I’m Jim’s son,” he recalls. “And so that allowed, probably my dad and I, to have a really lovely relationship on that film where it felt like we were friends and colleagues.”

Being on set every day also gave young Henson a deeper understanding of how his father thought about characters. “I learned a ton of stuff,” he admits. “Not so much storytelling, but character development.”

According to Henson, his father’s instincts ran counter to many traditional ideas about children’s entertainment.

“My dad had a kind of unique, quirky, sensibility when it came to characters. He shied away from the cute, sweet character – that wasn’t interesting to him,” he explains. Instead, his father trusted his own curiosity and would often do what he thought was “delightful.”

As Jim Henson’s son, one of the most surprising lessons came from seeing his father completely absorbed in work.

“One thing I learned on Labyrinth, that I hadn’t really seen up until then, was when he’s completely out of his ‘dad mode,’ and he’s just in his ‘work mode,’” Henson shares. “He became a child.” 

That sense of play and humility extended into his father’s leadership – and now into Henson’s.

Whenever his father was asked if his finished films ever matched his original visions, “He would always say, ‘No,’” Henson recalls.

“And of course it doesn’t,” he adds. “[He] had a vision, and then [he] hired 300 amazing artists, and they all put 100 percent of themselves into it.” That trust-first approach left a lasting mark.

“Better to trust somebody and let them go too far and you have to adjust it, than to be scared that they’re going to make a mistake and tell them precisely what to do,” Henson emphasizes. “The product’s just not going to be nearly as good.”

Nearly forty years later, Labyrinth is returning to theaters for a limited time between January 8th to 11th. Henson sees the re-release as another chance for new and true fans to experience the film’s meticulous craftsmanship in full scale.

“It’s fantastic because the film really deserves the big screen,” he says. “If you’re watching it on a TV, you’re not seeing half of it.”

For Henson, the Labyrinth’s re-release is about more than nostalgia – it’s about shared experience.

“Part of the fun of making a big extravagant movie is sitting with hundreds of people watching it,” he tells PEOPLE. “It’s not just seeing a movie on a big screen. It becomes an event that you’re going to that night.”