Director James Bobin, co-writer and star Jason Segel, and co-writer Nicholas Stoller delivered both a critical and commercial hit “The Muppets”, so what’s up with the sequel.
Collider as an interview with Nicholas Stoller to give us all of the details.
Collider: I have to open the door on the sequel to The Muppets. This is a mandatory question. What is going on with it right now? Are you writing?
Nicholas Stoller: I’m writing with James Bobin. We’ve outlined it over the past couple weeks and we literally started writing it yesterday. The first 13 pages are written.
Really?
Stoller: Yeah. It is started. It is on.
Obviously Jason [Segel] has talked about how he’s not going to be in it. Have you guys written the possibility of a cameo for Jason?
Stoller: Right now, yeah, there’s a cameo possibility in it, definitely. Gary and Mary’s story is concluded. There’s not much to say after that for their story, but we follow them up into a…I will say, it is a caper. It is a comedy caper.
Nice! I appreciate that. Has Disney told you guys when they want to release it?
Stoller: They really want it. It’s very…it was very encouraging and exciting. I’ve never been part of a franchise before. They want to do it. They want it as soon as possible, which is good. I’m not sure exactly when they want to release it. I think it was something like next summer, but I don’t know if that’s…I don’t think that that’s realistic in terms of getting it all together in time. But to want to do it so quickly is great. It certainly makes us want to write it quickly.
I love the first one. You mentioned comedy caper. Obviously the Muppets have done a lot of stuff. Are you looking at any of the previous Muppet movies or is this a whole new angle on what you guys are doing?
Stoller: Yeah, I think it’s similar to the first one in that the first one certainly had dramatic connections to the first Muppet movie, but it was a whole new thing, hopefully. This is the same thing. We love The Great Muppet Caper and we love Muppets Take Manhattan and whatnot. So this has some elements of that, but it’s different because it’s in the tone of what James and I like to do.
I’ve got to wrap, but two really quick last things: are you introducing any new characters and what’s going on with that TV pilot you’re doing?
Stoller: We are introducing new characters. That’s really fun to do. Secondly, the TV pilot I finished, that’s for CBS, I won’t know until mid-May if it’s picked up. It came out really well. The cast is awesome. I love it. I hope it’s picked up. Who knows.
http://collider.com/the-muppets-2-sequel-caper-nicholas-stoller-interview/159240/
