While many are still smarting over the loss of Jason Segel in The Muppets sequel, Disney is moving forward and already has a number of pieces in place. Jason Bobin and Nicholas Stoller are back to direct and co-write, and now another integral piece to the last film's success is returning. Collider has confirmed that Oscar-winner Bret McKenzie is writing new original songs for the film.
McKenzie took home an Academy Award for "Man or Muppet" the last time around, and the soundtrack is a large part of the reason why The Muppets turned out to be such a huge success, earning nearly $160M and bringing the Jim Henson creations back into the spotlight for the first time in years. Producer Todd Lieberman also revealed that filming on the Euro-set film will begin in January, with a release date pegged for December 20th 2013. That's not that far away, so expect to see a lot more casting announced soon. He also hinted that we may see a new Muppet introduced.
With Christoph Waltz recently signing on to play an Interpol agent, it sounds like The Muppets may be involved in some sort of international incident.
