Penn Alumni love producing Muppet movies

In case you missed it, recently, Todd Lieberman (C’95, Mask and Wig, AEPi) was featured in a New York Times article about how he and his producing partner David Hoberman are producing the next Muppet movie installment due out this November (remember when we shot THIS video while he was on the Muppet set?).

After the jump, learn more about the film’s fun plotline, how much it cost to produce and other Penn alumni who been a part of Muppets film history!

It seems like the new plotline has all the fun of one of my favorite Muppet movies, The Great Muppet Caper.  Per the article,

“The film, with a budget of just under $50 million, follows a small-town couple (Amy Adams and Mr. Segel) as they take a young Muppet named Walter — a new creation — to Los Angeles. They are on a hunt for the famous Muppet Studios, largely because the iPhone-toting Walter hasn’t quite sorted out his identity.

After finding the studio, they go on a tour — Alan Arkin plays the cranky guide — and find the place “rundown and for the most part abandoned,” ….But Kermit & Company decide to fix all that by reuniting the gang, Blues Brothers-style, for an old-fashioned variety show fund-raiser that saves the studio from a villain named Tex Richman, played by Chris Cooper, who thinks he can smell oil under the famous Muppet Theater.”

In the article, Todd says that, “People started to forget that the Muppets were never designed as children’s entertainment.”  On a related note, I recently went to the National Museum of American History where the history of the muppets was explained in this display case:

Read the rest of the NY Times article HERE

And let’s not forget there have been past Penn alumni writers who have also been a part of the Muppet film franchise…

Reunion Time!: DT Stories about your classmates: 2006, 2001, 1996, 1991, 1986, 1981, 1976, 1971

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