Raise the curtains and light the lights, because there’s some news on the new Muppet film to start off your week!
Jason Segel and Nick Stoller, the writer/star and director of the upcoming Forgetting Sarah Marshall, were recently tapped to develop, of all things, a new Muppet movie. Of course, announcing that the two guys behind an R-rated comedy were going to be guiding the next installment of the family-friendly franchise sounded as crazy as having comic actor/writer Seth Rogen developing a serious film adaptation of the classic old time radio hero The Green Hornet! Oh, wait a minute…
Anyway, the folks over at CHUD have managed to corner Segel and Stoller while the duo were on the publicity tour for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and managed to squeeze a few words out of them concerning their upcoming assignment writing for Kermit the Frog and friends-
Apparently their Muppet film is going to be incredibly old fashioned, with the familiar Muppet characters putting on a show to save an old theater. (The theater from The Muppet Show?). The danger? An evil character wants to tear the place down to get at the oil underneath. It’s sort of current!
Traditionally, the Muppet films have all been developed in-house, first by Muppet-creator Jim Henson and then by his several close associates. However, the recent spate of Muppet projects which have tried to graft them into various works of classic literature – Muppet Treasure Island and the made for television Muppet’s Wizard Of Oz – have not fared too well, perhaps motivating the move to outside writers. Previously, Kevin Smith associate Brian Lynch was approached by the Jim Henson Company to write a Muppet film, though they ultimately passed on his finished screenplay.
