Kermit Says That A Muppet Sequel Is Official… But Was He Under Duress?

Every time I’ve switched on my TV set this week, there’s been a Muppet on there and that’s just the way I like it. The little fellas are here in the UK to promote their new movie, just released here.

But I haven’t caught up with all of their appearances yet, and was behind on Wednesday’s edition of This Morning, featuring an interview with Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog. Tonight, however, I met some friends to see The Muppets – putting my money where my mouth is – and one of them tipped me off to a huge, shocking announcement that Kermit had made on the show.

The frog had said, I was told, that it was now official and a sequel to The Muppets is in the works.

Thanks to the magic of video recording, I can tell you exactly what went down. Here’s a transcript.

Phillip Schofield, presenter of the show:  Is it true that there’s talk of bringing the Muppets back, the actual show, the TV show?

Miss Piggy: I’ve been talking about it for a long while.

Kermit: We have been, yes, yes. I think that if this movie does as well as we’d like, if people want to see us, sure, we’ll probably do more movies… it’s nothing official… but there’s all this hush-hush Hollywood talk.

Piggy: Then make it official.

Kermit: Okay, it’s official.

It’s OFFICIAL. Kermit said so.

But this hush-hush Hollywood talk? What’s going on there? Well, there’s hardly been anything out in the trades, but while we’re here, there was some whispering that went largely overlooked.

Producers David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman spoke to The Hollywood Reporter in December and, even at that stage, early conversations about some kind of Muppet follow-up had begun:

We’ve been discussing the potential for something. We don’t know what it is or anything about it, it just started coming up recently — very early, nascent discussions of something potential that I wouldn’t even say is definitely going to happen.

And by now…? Well, I like Kermit’s version of events best of all. There’s a Muppet sequel, it’s official because the leader of the Muppets said so. Now all we have to do is wait for the humans to catch up.

If you want a little bit of sort-of new footage in the meantime, I noticed this trailer for the Blu-ray release of the film shows Gonzo, Gary and a bowling ball interacting in a way not seen in the final cut of the film. It’s really just a couple of seconds, but now seemed like a good time to mention it.