With nearly $154 million in worldwide box office, Disney is pretty happy with The Muppets director James Bobin co-writers Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel that they’ve officially ordered up a script for a sequel. Unfortunately, one of that triumvirate, Jason Segel, will not be participating in the writing.
It was Segel’s passion for the Muppets that was able to get the project rolling at Disney and the resultant movie is very much a love letter to the characters. But thanks in part to his work as both writer and non-foam and felt star of the film, Segel’s star has been on the rise and he has a lot on his plate right now including an upcoming seventh season of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, three films coming out this year (Jeff Who Lives at Home, The Five-Year Engagement and This is Forty) as well as a couple of writing assignments. So there’s the cruel irony that all the work he is getting in part due to The Muppets is the thing that is keeping him from coming back to work on the franchise again. (And if that doesn’t sound like a good plot for a future Muppets film, I don’t know what does.)
But while Segel won’t be able to participate in the scripting, sources tell Vulture that he could still return to act in the film if the story that Bobin and Stoller develop call for a return of his character. Considering that production is probably a year off at least, he certainly has advanced enough warning on when to potentially keep his schedule open.
