The last thing anyone heard about actor/writer Jason Segel’s Muppet movie was that Flight of the Conchords co-creator/director James Bobin had signed up to direct the film. Now comes more news on the movie – including a name change from The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made to the grander sounding The Greatest Muppet Movie Of All Time.
The screenplay – written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) – follows a man named Gary, his girlfriend named Mary and the man’s life-long nondescript, brown puppet best friend Walter as they round up and convince the now retired entertainers from the original Muppet Show to help save the famous television studio that the original variety series was filmed in. The film’s evil villain, Tex Richman, is due to take over the property, and wants to destroy the theater and drill for oil underneath.
Now, thanks to an anonymous source at The Playlist we now have more information on the script and what we can expect from the film:
It’s a solid attempt at recapturing what made “The Muppet Show” and the first two Muppetmovies so great, but “The Great Muppet Movie of All Time” is no “Great Muppet Caper” — ‘Caper’ being to the first Muppets film, what “The Empire Strikes Back” is to “Star Wars” — but it is a fresh, younger approach. Stoller and Segel have fun with the characters, are aware of what made the Muppet early years so great (winks to the audience, friendly musical numbers, single gag repetition, friendship and togetherness being the answer to everything), and hit the mark 65% of the time. We’re hoping the songs (the majority of which were missing from the script) help elevate the script from a harmless Muppet flick to a more memorable one, but there’s more work to be done first. But what their script lacks (oddly enough, this being a Muppet movie and all) is forward pulse. “The Muppet Movie” is about a frog’s drive to get to Hollywood and the people he meets along the way and the friendships he makes.
It’s a pretty positive review and definitely makes the film sound a lot better than some of the more recent Muppet efforts. If The Greatest Muppet Movie Of All Time can recapture even just a bit of the magic that those original Muppet movies had, should make for a great film.
If you’re interested, you can read more on the script over at The Playlist.
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[...] set to star as the human lead. Originally called The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made, the film was more recently renamed to the grander sounding The Greatest Muppet Movie Of All Time, and features a screenplay [...]