Just the fact that all of these names got together in the same room to discuss the Muppets is newsworthy itself. Jason Segel, the harbringer of the Muppet and his buddies met with the Pixar Elite to talk about the future of the Muppets franchise.
Jason Segel and the team involved with the next Muppet movie recently met with the bigwigs at Pixar to discuss ways to make your head explode.
Some of the members of the so-called “Pixar Brain Trust” — filmmakers John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, Michael Arndt, Bob Peterson and president Ed Catmull — were there for the consultations. Docter is a particularly avid Muppets fan, so he almost certainly was one of the attendees. On the Disney side, Muppets director James Bobin and producers David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman were likely in the room along with Segel.
Now no details have emerged about this meeting of minds, but I have read some knee jerk reactions online already this morning suggesting they would CG the Muppets.
I don’t think they are going to animate the Muppets. While not out of the realm of possibility for a side project (Muppet Babies were freaking awesome) but I don’t think they are looking at ways to digitally replace the Muppets. Kind of kills the point of them being Muppets. I have faith that the upcoming feature film will be traditional Muppets interacting with real people.
So what would Pixar’s involvement be? Well they are the masters at marketing and development. Nothing Pixar has done can be considered a failure. Even their least popular film critically – Cars – is their biggest selling property as far as merchandise and brand loyalty.
So with Disney owning the Muppets and having an asset like Pixar at their availability it is a smart move to reinvigorate the franchise with their best foot forward.
